Confirmation Trivia Questions
1. When did the Senate’s confirmation of a nominee to be Supreme Court Justice decrease the number of Justices on the Court?
(Partial) Answer: Today, Tuesday, January 31, 2006. Justice O’Connor’s resignation becomes effective upon the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Alito. We’ll have only eight Justices for at least a few minutes, or hours, or perhaps a day or two — until Justice Alito receives his commission and is sworn in.
2. Who was the first Justice to hold Jusice Alito’s new “seat”?
Answer: John McKinley, confirmed by voice vote just one week after his nomination by President van Buren in 1837. His confirmation created the first nine-Justice Court. These days, the seat is generally consdered the “eighth” of the nine we have remaining. Justice Catron’s seat was abolished after his death and never re-established; and Justice Field was the first holder of what was the “tenth” seat during the Civil War, now deemed the ninth seat (and held by Justice Scalia).
Justice Alito will be the eleventh holder of the McKinley seat: McKinley, Campbell, Davis, Harlan (I), Pitney, Sanford, Roberts, Burton, Stewart, O’Connor, Alito.
(I was going to note how remarkable it is that he will be only the third person to hold the seat in my lifetime . . . until I realized that all of us under the tender age of 67 have only known two Justices in the seat in which Justice Stevens now sits — a seat that will have turned over only twice in ninety (90) years come June 5th!)
And so, after a wait of almost thirteen years, Justice Ginsburg finally will have “brethren” on both sides of her. (Justice Breyer is at 12 -and-a-half years and counting.) The new line-up, three weeks from today, as counsel will be viewing the bench from left to right in the 80-minute consolidated argument in Rapanos v. U. S. and Carabell v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:
Breyer, Thomas, Kennedy, Stevens, Roberts, Scalia, Souter, Ginsburg, Alito
Speaking of historical trivia, when was the last time that a mid-term confirmation resulted in cases being reargued? How long after the new justice was confirmed did it take for the Court to announce the cases to be reargued? Can we expect the same timeframe from the Court this time around?
Comment by David Moran — January 31, 2006 @ 10:06 am
Justice Thomas was confirmed after the October arguments. Cipollone v. Liggett Group, 505 U.S. 504, was restored to the calendar for reargument almost immediately, and Doggett v. United States, 505 U.S. 647, about a month later. However, it doesn’t appear that he was casting the deciding vote in either case. (I hedge because Cipollone looks like a messy split, and I haven’t waded through it to figure it out.)
Justice Kennedy was the last truly mid-term confirmation, and it appears that several cases were reargued. Among them was K-Mart v. Cartier, 486 U.S. 281, one of those cases you have to suspect the Court chose just for the name. Justice Kennedy wrote the lead opinion, but the Court was splintered.
Comment by Kent Scheidegger — January 31, 2006 @ 7:17 pm
By my calculations, Justice Stevens became the third-oldest sitting Supreme ever on 10th January this year, when he passed Blackmun’s retirement age of 85 years 8.7 months – 31310 days. The only 2 ever to have celebrated an 86th birthday on the Court – which Stevens will do if he is still there on 20/4/06 – were Taney and Holmes.
Comment by Graham — February 3, 2006 @ 7:32 pm