Why the SCOTUS nomination could move quickly, beginning Oct. 12

Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has not announced the schedule, but the Oct. 12 start date confirmed by Republican sources allows the nominee time to complete pre-hearing paperwork and collection of background material by staff. Perhaps most importantly, it allows time for the nominee to hold private meetings with individual senators.

A GOP aide told the Washington Examiner to expect the nominee to begin making the rounds in the U.S. Senate next week.

The confirmation process for a Supreme Court justice takes several weeks and sometimes months, depending on the nominee.

The late Justice John Paul Stevens was confirmed in just 19 days, in 1975. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose open seat Senate Republicans will try to fill, was confirmed in 42 days, in 1993.

Senate aides said the length of the upcoming confirmation process may hinge on the woman Trump nominates.

If the president picks a candidate already confirmed to a federal bench by the Senate, much of the background process may already be completed.

But the process could take much longer if the candidate has never been scrutinized through the Senate confirmation process.

“If you get a blank-slate candidate, it takes longer to accumulate and gather the volume of information necessary to proceed to hearings,” a Senate aide said. “Basically, it amounts to almost every writing, speech, or known utterance by the nominee.”

Senate Republicans are eager to process the nomination and vote on it by Nov. 3 to eliminate the risk of GOP lawmakers deciding against voting on a nominee if the Senate or White House flip to Democratic control.

Democrats, meanwhile, will do everything within their limited power in the minority to slow down the process.

They will likely block immediate consideration of the nominee, which would require the Judiciary Committee to postpone proceedings by a week.

“We’ve begun strategizing about the tools that we have,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a member of the Judiciary Committee. “Our tools are limited. We have no magic panacea. But we can make our case there, in the committee and publicly to the American people.”

Some Democrats have talked about boycotting the hearing, but there are no real strategies to block Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from bringing up a vote on the nominee while the GOP holds the Senate. In fact, McConnell can call up a vote on the nominee without approval of the committee, which he threatened to do with Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.

But Republicans for now are eager to confirm the nominee with adequate deliberation following the normal process, and they believe they have plenty of time to do it.

“It’s going to depend upon giving fair consideration and due process to whoever the nominee is, and if that can be done in a timely way,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune, a South Dakota Republican. “And that everybody gets an opportunity in the process to be able to ask their questions and feel satisfied that they’re comfortable going forward, that’ll probably, more than anything else, weigh into the timing.”

Trump’s top two choices appear to be judges Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa.

Both were confirmed recently by the Senate to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Lagoa to the 11th Circuit in December 2019 and Coney Barrett to the 7th Circuit in November 2017.

Picking either woman would cut back on the sheer volume of background information Senate staff would have to acquire ahead of consideration of a nominee.

“With a nominee who has already been confirmed to a federal appellate court, at least some, and hopefully a lot, of this documentation has already been gathered,” a Senate aide said.

“To use a sports analogy, some portion of the ‘scouting report’ has already been done.”