Channels, Fall 2019

Channels • 2019 • Volume 4 • Number 1 Page 23 to the overall rationale to oppose his nomination. After all, evaluating his mental capacities in this specific case would only be fair and in keeping with the review of the nominee’s general fitness to serve. However, James Gauch provides strong reasoning to oppose the notion that his nomination could have been rejected on grounds of his mental instability. He believes that in order for him to have been appointed to the highest bench in the land, he would have had to pass Washington’s “stiff criteria,” which would also simultaneously call into question Washington’s judgment (360). Next, the people of South Carolina trusted his judgment by electing him Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court (Gauch 360). His recess appointment “evidenced no mental unsoundness” (Gauch 360). Nothing but Rutledge’s opposition to the Jay Treaty should be accredited to the failure of his nomination to the Supreme Court. In doing so, scholars place Rutledge’s rejection for Chief Justice to the Supreme Court squarely in the box as a politically motivated opposition to his nomination. Though Rutledge served as the Chief Justice via a recess appointment, he lost in the Senate by a vote of fourteen to ten (Ross 642). Thomas Jefferson wrote William Giles a letter in response to the Rutledge nomination, saying, “The rejection of Mr. Rutledge by the Senate is a bold thing, because they cannot pretend any objection to him but his disapprobation of the treaty” (Gauch 361). The results of the Senate’s actions speak boldly. For one, the Senate acted on the nomination and neither delayed a response, nor did they completely ignore the nomination. Second, President Washington did not consider the rejection unconstitutional (Ross 642). Instead, Washington proceeded to nominate another individual to fill the position, following in the mold of his position earlier when he said, “for as the President has a right to nominate without assigning his reasons, has the Senate a right to dissent without giving theirs” (Harris 39). The former delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were notably Senators who rejected a fellow colleague from the Convention purely on partisan grounds (Marcus and Perry 99). Another major aspect to consider concerns the fact that the Senate used political disagreements as a basis for rejection of the nominee. Harris writes that the “Senate thus established a precedent of inquiring into the political views and ideas of persons nominated for public office and of rejecting a nominee whose views do not correspond to those of the majority of the Senate” (43). Ross considered Rutledge’s failed nomination as political by nature, and “unrelated to his fitness to serve on the Court” (643). The Senate’s political considerations that were attached to Rutledge’s confirmation process—along with acquiescence by key individuals, including President Washington and other Founding Fathers—clearly indicated that political considerations were to some extent acceptable to the confirmation process. Such an acceptance has ushered in an unnecessary amount of political and judicial philosophy considerations into the Supreme Court confirmation process. Joseph Harris wrote the following on the early development of Supreme Court confirmation processes: Appointments were influenced greatly by political consideration, and the action of the Senate was fully as political as that of the President. Few of the rejections of Supreme Court nominations in this period can be ascribed to any lack of qualifications on the part of the nominees; for the most part they were due to political differences between the President and a majority of the Senate. (303) Ross records in his book a number of other failed Supreme Court nominations that were the result of political considerations instead of qualifications, including Alexander Wolcott in 1871, Ebenezer Hoar in 1870, and both William B. Hornblower and Wheeler H. Peckham in 1894 (643). The lack of direct limitation in the Constitution of the Senate’s ability to utilize political considerations, personal character attributes, or someone outside of the mainstream of judicial