Judicial Nominations

Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) spoke about a recent agreement over threatened filibusters of Bush administration judicial nominations in the Senate and the potential procedural responses by Republican leadership. Republicans had threatened to use rulings from the president of the Senate to find that cloture motions were out of order and force a confirmation vote that would have taken a simple majority to pass, rather than the two-thirds majority vote to enforce cloture on debate.

In his remarks he addressed likely short and long term implications for the Senate, the courts, and the nation of the filibuster agreement. He also talked about the levels of partisanship in Senate debates, the rights of the minority party, and the constitutional precedents governing the “advice and consent” provisions on presidential appointments. close