As discussed here, Governor Murphy nominated John Hoffman to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Solomon, who reached mandatory retirement this summer. It took until now, over three months from the announcement of the nomination, for the Senate to begin to take action on that. Unfortunately, that meant that the Supreme Court opened the current Term and heard some cases with only six Justices sitting.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to send the Hoffman nomination to the full Senate. Approval there is expected to occur on Monday.

According to press reports, Senators from both parties had only positive things to say about John Hoffman, an encouraging display of bipartisanship of the type that would ideally be justified by every judicial nomination. Mr. Hoffman is an independent who served as Attorney General under a Republican Governor and has now been nominated for the Supreme Court by a Democratic Governor. All that meant that, from a purely political perspective only, and apart from the nominee’s evident credentials, neither party should have had any objections.