On June 25, 1992, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden went to the Senate floor to urge President George H.W. Bush not to nominate anyone to the Supreme Court if a vacancy opened up before that fall’s election. “Should a justice resign this summer and the president move to name a successor,” he counseled, “a process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all. Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Senate itself.”

Biden noted that, among the previous seven nominations, two were not confirmed and two were approved over major opposition. Under the circumstances, if Bush were to nominate someone anyway, the Judiciary Committee “should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.” There was no election-year vacancy, so any showdown was averted. But that speech would resurface 24 years later, when President Obama, with Biden as his vice president, made a Supreme Court nomination in the final year of his second term, which led to plenty of debate over the “Biden Rule.”