Noah Feldman, Columnist

Filibustering Gorsuch Is Still a Bad Idea

Better for Democrats to save that option in case Trump nominates a truly terrible judge.

March 24, 2017 at 5:07 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

How could you filibuster this face?
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer’s suggestion that Democrats will filibuster Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court might make sense as payback for the Republicans’ block on Judge Merrick Garland -- if the Democrats thought they could lockout any Trump nominee until 2020. If not, however, this seems like a bad moment to bring out the filibuster and subject it to the risk that the Republicans will use the so-called nuclear option to eliminate it for this and future Supreme Court fights.

Using the filibuster when Republicans say they will kill it is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. It would be wise to save it for a Supreme Court nominee who was truly terrible, rather than using it on a well-qualified nominee.