Skip to content

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020

Are partisan fights over Supreme Court nominees a recent phenomenon?

Allegra Taylor, Gigafact
no

Numerous Supreme Court nominations have been contentious since the court was first established. Of the 164 nominees in U.S. history, only 127 have won Senate confirmation.

In 1795, the Senate rejected George Washington’s choice for Chief Justice, John Rutledge, after he delivered a speech condemning a treaty with Britain, which the Senate had supported.

In 1930, nominee John Parker was rejected after outside groups unearthed controversial statements he'd made about unions and Black political involvement. The rejection was fueled in part by resentment toward Herbert Hoover.

In 1987, nominee Robert Bork was rejected after pushback by liberal groups. In 2005, Harriet Miers's nomination was withdrawn in the face of bipartisan opposition.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.