Yes, the Barrett Hearings Are About the Election, Not the Law
Democrats and Republicans use the hearings for partisan advantage. What did we expect?
A hearing or free political advertising?
Photographer: Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images
The Amy Coney Barrett nomination hearings have started and guess what? They’re just as much of an election-year circus as everyone expected them to be.
Back in 2016, when Republicans claimed that nominating and confirming a Supreme Court justice during an election year was a violation of the electorate’s right to choose, they were fond of citing something they called the “Biden rule.” In fact, what Joe Biden said when he was Judiciary Committee chair in the summer of 1992 was that if a vacancy were to arise after his June 25 speech, he would urge President George H.W. Bush to wait to nominate a new justice until after the election, and at any rate he would not hold hearings until afterward.