Advice and consent

The term "advice and consent" appears twice in the United States Constitution, both times in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2.

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.This language was written at the Constitutional Convention as part of a delicate compromise concerning the balance of power in the federal government.

Under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, appointments to the office of vice president are confirmed by a majority vote in both houses of Congress, instead of just the Senate.

On November 21, 2013, the Democratic Party, led by then-majority leader Harry Reid, overrode the filibuster of a nomination with a simple majority vote to change the rules (exercising the parliamentary "nuclear option").

On February 13, 2016, Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader of the Republican Party, said that the Senate would refuse to confirm a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia until after the 2016 presidential election, a historic rebuke of President Obama's authority and an extraordinary challenge to the practice of considering each nominee on his or her individual merits.

Despite McConnell's claim, no Senate leader had ever asserted such a right — and there was no precedent for a sitting president to hand over his power of high-court appointment at the request of any member of the legislative branch.