On Jan. 3, after a record-setting 293 days lying essentially untouched, Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court came to an unceremonious end.

With the close of the 114th Congress’s term, it expired — a casualty of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitchell McConnell’s bold tactic of insisting from the start that a Supreme Court nomination made by a president with less than a year left in office was not deserving of the Senate’s time or respect.