Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have decried the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominations, but those who are frustrated with the process shouldn't expect an immediate change, a panel of Senate experts said Tuesday.
The panel, organized by the liberal American Constitution Society, included Martin Paone, a former secretary of the Senate's Democratic caucus. Paone said he favors keeping some version of the filibuster, and that many senators do, too, because it gives them influence over presidential picks.
"Having an ability to filibuster a judge requires a president to pick people who are mainstream," said Paone, now executive vice president of the lobbying firm Prime Policy Group.
Another panelist, Makan Delrahim, witnessed the confirmation wars of George W. Bush's administration as a Republican lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee. As staff director and chief counsel under Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Delrahim said he saw how "brutal" the process can be for nominees. "I have a real problem with the filibuster. I think it eats away at the Senate and the decorum the Senate is known for," he said.
But Delrahim, now a partner at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, said a change in the process would probably require a delayed effective date -- of, say, four years -- so that senators wouldn't know which party would benefit from the change.
The panel, which also included liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias, discussed several possible changes. Paone, for example, said there could be a rule automatically ending debate unless some minimum number of senators publicly request that debate go on -- effectively reversing the current system, which puts the procedural burden on those who want to end debate. But such proposals have made little headway.
This article first appeared on The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
