Some history of the Supreme Court
I admit to a certain curiosity about history, and a certain bias towards facts.
In an attempt to find some, I turn to my copy of the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, which I sometimes scan. Concerning nominations it says
"From 1789 to mid 1992 the U.S. Senate has rejected 28 of the 143 nominees forwarded to it by presidents. (Eleven were not rejected per se but were simply not acted upon.)" p 692
Only five of those have been in the 20th century. Four of them the appointees of Republican Presidents. One by Hoover, two by Nixon and Robert Bork. Douglas Ginsburg was shot down before he was appointed by Reagan.
The other one was Chief Justice Earl Warren retired in June of 1968, but Republicans prevented the nomination of Abe Fortas because they expected to win the election. In that case though, there was not a vacancy of the court since Warren just stayed on.
There have been various periods when there were NOT 9 Supreme Court justices, the longest of which in recent history was 391 days from 14 May 1969 when Fortas was 'forced' to resign after a Life magazine story from 5 May until he was replaced by Harry Blackmun on 9 Jun 1970. That delay happened because not one, but TWO nominees were rejected by the Senate 45-55 and 45-51.
There were two delays of over 900 days in the 1840s and 1860s (because apparently two other justices died before the first one was replaced and it took multiple years before they were all replaced.
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