No election-year ban on appointments

President Barack Obama’s political opponents have made much of the fact that it has been nearly 80 years since a Supreme Court nomination was made in a presidential election year.

A quick perusal of Wikipedia shows that this is not strictly true. In June1968, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Justice Abe Fortas to be chief justice and Clement Haynsworth to take Fortas’ old position, but the Senate rejected the first nomination and thereby rendered the second moot.

It is true that the last successful nomination to the Supreme Court in a presidential election year prior was nearly 80 years ago, in 1940 when President Franklin Roosevelt nominated Frank Murphy. But it is also true that it has been 60 years since a vacancy arose in a presidential election year, and it occurred less than a month before the 1956 election.

This story was originally published February 15, 2016 at 7:00 PM with the headline "No election-year ban on appointments."