Nowhere in the Constitution does it allow one man to prevent the senate from voting .

[pwb]

It is only a senate rule that allows it. Senate rules could be unconstitutional. Maybe the courts should look at senate rules interfering with the nations business.

[htuttle]

1. They could go past him now

They just need enough votes for cloture.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. Messing w Interstate commerce?

Huh.

[marylandblue]

3. Court doesn't interfere in Senate rules.

And as long as his party backs him up, he can do whatever he wants.

[marylandblue]

7. What would be the violation?

It doesn't say the Senate MUST do anything at all. It just assumes they will fulfill their duties. McConnell took advantage of this loophole by not considering Merrick Garland.

[pwb]

8. Interfering with the proceedings of the senate?

[marylandblue]

12. I really doubt it, as this is an internal Senate matter, and Senate enforces its own rules.

[pwb]

14. They are rules for proceeding not interfering.

That is how I read it anyway.

[raging moderate]

15. Yes, it does! That word "shall" in that context confers the imperative mood.

This was specifically taught in my 7th and 8th grade English classes. And they reminded us of it in 8th grade civics classes, preparing for that Constitution test. And anybody with an education would have known that in the late eighteenth century. The traditional English grammar rule was "I shall" and "he/she/they will." If a writer wrote, "he/she/they SHALL," that meant that they MUST do it. Good grammar is good logic. Probably they never dreamed that this distinction would be gradually blurred. Our increasingly careless grammar has cost us dearly once again.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. Article I, Section 5

In part:

Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei

[pwb]

6. Key word proceedings.

not interference.

[Empowerer]

24. Deciding what and what not to bring up is part of the proceedings.

Hundreds of bills are introduced but not acted on in the Senate each year. Not bringing up a bill is a procedural matter, not "interference."

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

9. +1

[Sherman A1]

11. Yup

And there you have it. Such a simple and easy document to read. More need to do so.

[LongtimeAZDem]

28. +1 /nt

[MineralMan]

29. Yup. That's the place in the Constitution that

lets the Senate do whatever its members decided to do as to its rules.

Once again, lack of knowledge of the actual document is visible in this thread.

I read it in High School Civics Class and we went through it and got explanations for every article and section. I guess that wasn't the case for many people, or they slept through it. I've read it all again many times over the years. Most people have never read it through even once.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

33. I was lucky in high school

It wasn't called "Civics"; the lady who taught the class changed it to simply "Government" and nobody argued with her over that. She was active in politics at all levels and knew her stuff. H.S. students are naturally rebellious, but none won a debate with her, in or out of class. "If you don't like the laws, change the writers."

[MineralMan]

35. In my small-town high school, there were two tracks

through the curriculum. One track presented things like the Constitution and our government simply and superficially. The other track, the one they called the "College Prep" track, dug in quite a bit deeper. These days, the only track in most schools is the "outhouse track," where you're lucky if you don't soil your shoes going or coming on the arcane language path of the Constitution.

[beachbum bob]

10. senate rules are rules as agreed to and can be changed, Supreme Court has zero say in it

[pwb]

13. Agreed to by the majority only.

I still think it can be challenged on interference of Senate proceedings. The rules apply to proceedings, McConnell is not proceeding.

[beachbum bob]

19. again SC will NOT rule on senate OR house rules as set by those bodies.

[Empowerer]

25. Not acting is proceeding.

Under your argument, the Leader would be required to pay to a vote every bill introduced in the Senate. It doesn't work that way.

[pecosbob]

16. These days if the Court is your only avenue of redress, you're pretty much f*cked

I think we're seeing the very last vestiges of what little integrity the Courts' had disappear.

There is a little known law called malfeasance but would be a major hoop through which to make the courts jump.

[3catwoman3]

17. It is most definitely way too much power...

...for one senator to have.

[Hassler]

18. The Constitution allows Senate (and House) to make their own rules.

See the filibuster.

[pwb]

23. The Constitution says the rules are for Proceeding!!!!!!!!

Not for stalling or for interference with Proceeding. PROCEEDING . The rules were mentioned in the post???????

[tritsofme]

31. This is silly. Come on.

[brooklynite]

20. Question: do you want the Courts to dictate how Policy is made in Congress?

Because that would be the effective result of such a ruling.

[raging moderate]

21. The Senate MAY make its own rules, BUT: The President SHALL (MUST) APPOINT JUDGES.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, almost everybody would have known that word SHALL confers power to appoint judges on the President, with advice and consent of the Senators. So if they vote no, that could block a judicial appointment. But I see NO power granted to just McConnell to block any chance of a vote.

[tritsofme]

32. Your idea is...novel to say the least. What of the dozens of Trump nominees who were returned

to the White House when the old Congress expired, never getting a vote? There is a no practical difference between say Garland and any of these nominees. Is this also a constitutional crisis?

The answer is no. Just as happens every year, dozens of presidential nominees are returned to the White House due to Senate inaction, ie they never received a vote on the floor.

This is standard practice, there is no positive constitutional obligation for the Senate to act on any particular nominee. The Senate’s non-action serves as the denial of their consent.

What McConnell did was unconscionable and norm-busting, but the only remedies that exist are political.

[Vinca]

22. Apparently Mitch's copy of the Constitution says that.

[spanone]

26. there's two. trump/mcconnell

[MineralMan]

30. The Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over the rules of the Senate.

That's spelled out right in the Constitution. We have three branches of government by design. All three are co-equal, but have different responsibilities. That's all spelled out pretty clearly in the document.

I suggest a thorough reading every few years, just so you'll remember what's in the Constitution.

[Jose Garcia]

34. Courts don't "look at" things.

They make rulings based on lawsuits filed by plaintiffs who have standing.

[raging moderate]

36. Okay, naysayers. WHY is McConnell's little trick unprecedented?

IF, as you insist on believing, the US Constitution did not have any prohibition against refusing to consider a President's judicial appointments, then why was Mitch McConnell the first Majority Leader to block many of the lower-court appointments, and finally, with the flimsy excuse that it was less than a year before an election, a Supreme Court justice appointment? Do you believe the nineteenth century politicians were more ethical, or less intelligent, than Mitch McConnell? What magical incantation do you imagine was inhibiting these people from doing what Mitch McConnell has done? Of course, they were plenty smart enough to think of it, and some of them were plenty immoral enough to do it! So why didn't they do it? Their understanding of some words in the US Constitution must have been keeping them from doing it, along with their understanding that most of the educated people around them also understood these words and would take strong action against them if they dared to do it. I contend that they understood that the traditional grammar, and therefore the logic, of the US Constitution, did indeed have words in it that would prohibit a nasty little "procedural" trick such as Mitch McConnell pulled against Barack Obama. McConnell managed to block so many of Obama's appointments that Trump's people have had a field day filling extra judicial seats. And then Mitch topped it off with his crowning achievement, about which he crowed so proudly, illegally blocking Obama's Supreme Court appointment with an invalid and unconstitutional ploy. NO, we ALL dropped the ball in this case. We need to become more detail-oriented.