There is no Biden Rule. Republicans just made it a rule to justify a political trick.
This is pretty ancient history. We are going back at least 2 years since this “rule” was invoked, and then all the way to 1992 to see its roots. So why am I thinking about this today?
This morning a small group of my friends got together for coffee and somehow the conversation drifted back from Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to the lack of hearings for Judge Garland a few years back.
During that conversation a friend suggested the Biden rule was just being applied by the Republicans. Since I was not aware that the Democrats had denied hearing to a nominee of a Republican President, I looked up the Biden rule. It seems there was no denial and no rule.
The so-called Biden rule was just a suggestion of how a hypothetical situation could be handled. And it had nothing to do with denying hearings, just the timing of them. It was a suggestion of something that could be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee to avoid a nasty political fight over a Supreme Court nomination during election season. A small quote from that article is below. The part in quotes are Senator Biden’s words. The whole article is worth reading and I had difficultly picking out the most relevant part for this post.
Biden said if Bush were to nominate someone anyway, “the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”
Based on Biden’s words, it appears he would not have objected to Bush nominating someone the day after election day. It would have given the Senate more than two and a half months to vote on confirmation.
On March 16, 2016 President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked the “Biden Rule” to explain why he would not hold confirmation hearings. Note that the date of nomination about 10 months before the end of President Obama’s term and 8 months before the election.
This so-called “Biden rule” invoked by Senator McConnell bears little resemblance to the actual words of Senator Biden which was a more suggestion that if a Supreme Court nomination was made very close to the campaign and election “the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”
If it were a rule, the Republicans would be in violation of it since the current hearings are starting about 2 months before the election.