Famed civil rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz said Friday "there's nothing historic" about Judge Neil Gorsuch being confirmed to the Supreme Court on a "nuclear option" simple-majority vote led by Senate Republicans.
"We've never had a filibuster for a Supreme Court nominee," the Harvard Law School professor emeritus told host Bill Tucker on "The Steve Malzberg Show" in an interview. "They got rid of it on the same day that they used it.
"It's never been used before," regarding Supreme Court justices, he added.
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"If I were writing the Constitution from scratch, I would probably want a two-thirds vote for a Supreme Court justice. You want justices to be bipartisan and acceptable to both sides, but that's not the rule.
"The rules are a simple majority," Dershowitz continued. "That's what the framers of the Constitution put in.
"The filibuster was a Southern tactic designed essentially to prevent civil rights laws from being enacted.
"The liberals usually oppose filibusters — and the conservatives wanted them," he said.
"But it all depends on whose ox was being gored — and that's what politics has become: principle for me but not for thee."
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