This paper examines the causes of the rise in vacancies on the federal courts in recent decades. Under President Barack Obama, the number of vacancies on the federal courts has sharply jumped. This is due to firm opposition by Senate Republicans, who have used the various procedural tools of that body to make it difficult for nominees to get confirmation. This antagonism is the result of a shift in how the parties view the courts and their role in the American political process. The Warren Court's expansion of substantive due process rights increased the Court's powers to the chagrin of conservatives. Republicans responded by blocking the nomination of Abe Fortas for Chief Justice; Democrats retaliated by defeating several of Richard Nixon's nominees to replace Fortas. These battles, and the prominence of legal issues such as abortion, would culminate in the vicious fight over Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Court, which influenced increasingly bitter fights in recent decades. I also propose a possible solution to the obstruction problem, inspired by procedures used in jury selection.

The aim of this thesis is to find an explanation of the obstacles to deploying Article 7 TEU measures as we see it today. This explanation will be sought in the events in this field starting from the formation of the provision, all the way up to this writing moment. The explanation will be searched for by using the research question: What in the process offorming and amending Article 7 TEU can explain the hesitancy and hardship to deploy the article today? Four hypotheses for explanations are identified; 1) Article 7 TEU is a political rather than legal provision, and is thus infiltrated with political subjectiveness rather than legal objective- ness, 2) lessons from the Haider affair have caused hesitancy, 3) adding intermediate steps and alternative procedures have weakened the nature of the provision, and 4) the nuclear notion has falsely created hesitancy to take action and oblivion of the softer mechanisms of the provision. This study concludes, that to fully understand the Article 7 TEU struggles as of today, both political implications, intermediate steps, alternative mechanisms and lessons from the Haider affair has to be taken into account. This com- plexity does then confirm the sufficiency of the explanation: Many factors has played a role in forming the hesitancy and hardship to deploy Article 7 TEU, but the intergovernmental and political nature of the provision explains why it still have not been fully implemented. This is although the scope and appli- cation of the provision fully fits the problems of democratic backsliding, that permeates some of the member states of the EU.