Confirmation Trivia Questions
on Jan 31, 2006 at 1:26 am
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 Justice 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
