Due to the fact that Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice unexpectedly died this month, the outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama was given a somewhat rare opportunity to nominate a third Supreme Court Justice. However, because of the possibility that the Supreme Court’s future decisions will be affected once another one of his allies makes it into office, a partisan fight (which is more of a cat fight, though), broke out between the warring Republican and Democratic Parties. Since this is a rare opportunity which is in the outgoing President’s favor, the Republicans have greatly opposed the decision by vowing that they will stall or stop an Obama Nominee from making it into office.
This leaves us the question, How long does it take for a Supreme Court Nominee to get confirmed into office? Well…here it is:
- The Normal Confirmation takes less than a Month. Just as was mentioned earlier, the ‘normal’ or usual confirmation time for U.S. Supreme Court Nominees takes 25 Days to be exact. During this time, the Senate will either vote to confirm or to reject the nominee or just abstain from voting altogether. However, in order for the nominee to get confirmed, he or she must gather two-third votes.
- Present Court Members are confirmed after 60 days or more. As of now, the U.S. Supreme Court Members are confirmed by the Senate votes after an average of two months. This is because disputes usually broke out before the two warring parties, thereby stalling the time.
- The Longest Confirmation was made after more than four Months. To make things straight, the longest time for office confirmation as of present is the confirmation of Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to enter the U.S. Supreme Court, which took 125 days.