A crowd watches as the body of the late Justice Antonin Scalia is taken into the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on February 19, 2016. Photo by Indianz.Com

Senate Republicans cited a June 1992 speech by a former colleague as one reason to refuse to consider a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court in an election year. Vice President Joe Biden defends his comments nearly 25 years later:

Some have taken comments I made in 1992 to mean that I supported the same kind of obstructionist position as a senator. But that reading distorts the broader meaning of the speech I gave from the Senate floor that year.

It was late June, and at the time there was much speculation that a sitting justice would retire, leaving President George H.W. Bush to appoint a successor in the final months of his first term.

We had been through several highly contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings during my tenure, and I feared that a nomination at that late date, just a few weeks before the presidential conventions, would create immense political acrimony. So I called on the president to wait until after the election to submit a nomination if a sitting justice were to create a vacancy by retiring before November. And if the president declined to do that, I recommended that the Judiciary Committee not hold hearings “until after the political campaign season is over.”

Those brief statements were part of a much more extensive speech that reviewed the history of Supreme Court nomination fights during election years. My purpose was not to obstruct, but to call for two important goals: restoring a more consultative process between the White House and the Senate in filling Supreme Court vacancies, and encouraging the nomination of a consensus candidate who could lower the partisan temperature in the country.

It is the same view I hold today.

Get the Story:
Joe Biden: The Senate’s Duty on a Supreme Court Nominee (The New York Times 3/4)

Also Today:
In Senate Brawl Over Court Nominee, Knuckles Will Be Bare (The New York Times 3/4)
Republicans Have a Stake in Making a Deal on a Supreme Court Justice (The New York Times 3/4)

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