Thurmond Rule

The Thurmond rule, in US politics, posits that at some point in a presidential election year, the US Senate will not confirm the president's nominees to the federal judiciary except under certain circumstances. The practice is not an actual "rule" and has not always been followed in the past, with presidents continuing to appoint and the Senate continuing to confirm judicial nominees during election years.

Although described by experts as a myth, the "rule" has been inconsistently invoked by senators from both political parties, usually when politically advantageous to do so.

The Thurmond rule "has its origins in June 1968, when Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, blocked President Lyndon B. Johnson's appointment of Justice Abe Fortas as chief justice." The "rule" has been variously described:

The "rule" is not observed consistently by the Senate. A 2012 study by judicial expert Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution showed that in each of the four previous presidential election years (1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008), the pace of federal judicial nominations and confirmations slowed but did not stop. Wheeler describes the "rule" as a myth, noting that while it becomes more difficult for a president to push through his nominees in his last year of office, nominations and confirmations have been routinely made in presidential election years. Similarly, a 2008 Congressional Research Service report could not identify any "consistently observed date or point in time after which the Senate ceased processing district and circuit nominations during the presidential election years from 1980 to 2004." For instance, in December 1980, Stephen Breyer (who later became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States) was confirmed as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Additionally, in 1984, when Thurmond was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, judicial confirmations occurred that fall.

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