Recently, Stephen Breyer, the oldest justice on the Supreme Court, announced that he will retire, giving President Biden the chance to nominate his first SCOTUS justice. Breyer, 83, was nominated by President Bill Clinton and confirmed in 1994. Since 2016, Supreme Court nominations have been intensely bitter political battles. Merrick Garland, President Obama’s replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, was refused a hearing by the Republican Senate. Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s replacement for Scalia, saw the first use of the nuclear option on Supreme Court confirmation votes, lowering the threshold for confirmation from 60 votes to 50. Brett Kavanaugh, the replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy, was confirmed amid many sexual assault accusations. Amy Coney Barett, Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, might have been the bitterest battle yet, due to Republicans’ hypocrisy in confirming her in an election year while denying that right to Merrick Garland 4 years earlier. The last 4 Supreme Court nominations have been incredibly toxic. Compared to that, it is hard to believe that Breyer was confirmed with over 90% of the vote, the last justice to receieve such an honor. Even since then, Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan received 78%, 68.7%, and 63% of the vote, respectively. Clearly, up until the last 6 years, Supreme Court nominees were able to get some level of bipartisan support, even if its not the same level as 30 years ago. However, Gorsuch was confirmed with only three Democratic votes, Kavanaugh with one, and Barrett none. Considering that our political landscape is more polarized than ever, it is safe to assume that we have a similarly bitter fight coming up.

The Senate is currently evenly split between the two parties, with Vice President Harris’ vote giving Democrats a majority. No Democrat has ever voted against one of Biden’s nominees to lower district and circuit courts, and three Republicans have consistently voted for his nominees, specifically Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. Therefore, it seems like the best case scenario would be three Republicans joining every Democrat to confirm Biden’s nominee, however it is more likely to be even less than that. It is unfortunate that nowadays, Supreme Court nominees are judged by their political ideology, and not their qualifications. All of the past four nominees, despite their ideological differences, have been extremely intelligent and highly qualified, definitely worthy to serve on the country’s highest court. The focus on candidates’ ideological beliefs began with the nomination of Robert Bork to the court by President Reagan in 1987. Before then, nominees were almost always confirmed by extremely large margins, with objections being based on their ability to serve and not their beliefs. However, Democrats borked Bork’s nomination due to his opposition to several Democratic policies, most notably civil rights. Though this did not immediately lead to politicization of the nomination process, it definitely set the precedent that Supreme Court nominees could be rejected because of their politics. I wish that we could go back to how it was before, so that justices would only be considered by their qualifications and abilites, and not by whether they agreed with you or not.