Pete Sessions: “the role of the Senate is to advise and consent in nominations by the President for judicial vacancies. That is…”

“the role of the Senate is to advise and consent in nominations by the President for judicial vacancies. That is understood in the Constitution. Every nominee of the President comes before the Judiciary Committee and then they come before this body for a vote. We are at this point analyzing the nomination of William Fletcher, Willie Fletcher from California, to the Ninth Circuit. I regretfully must say I have concluded that I have to oppose that nomination. And I would like to discuss the reasons why. Most of the nominations that have come forward from the President have received favorable review by the Judiciary Committee. In fact, we cleared nine today. A number of them are on the docket today and will probably pass out today. So we are making some substantial progress. Nearly half of the vacancies that exist now in Federal courts are because there are no nominees for those vacancies--almost half of them. But on occasion we need to stand up as a Senate and affirm certain facts about our courts and our Nation. One of the facts that we need to affirm is that courts must carry out the rule of law, that they are not there to make law. The courts are there to enforce law as written by the Congress and as written by the people through their Constitution that we adopted over 200 years ago.”