FASTER, PLEASE: Checks on Trump’s Court Picks Fall Away.

Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) reined in a tradition that empowered senators to block federal appeals-court nominees from their home state. His decision came about four years after Democrats, citing Republican filibusters of President Barack Obama’s circuit-court nominees, eliminated a Senate rule that required the majority party to mount 60 votes to advance a nominee to a confirmation vote.

Together, the threat of a filibuster—or delaying tactic—and use of “blue slips”—so-named because senators indicate support or opposition to nominees on blue slips of paper—guarded against lifetime appointments for nominees deemed far outside the mainstream, court experts said. Getting rid of these checks could foment distrust in judges’ work if Mr. Trump and later presidents prioritize ideology over experience or legal talent, some of the experts said.

“When judges lose legitimacy in the public eye, they lose the ability to enforce unpopular decisions,” said Arthur Hellman, an expert on the federal judiciary and law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “And that’s when you see an unraveling in the rule of law.”

Others said the changes were part of a natural progression away from Senate traditions that allowed the minority party to stall nominations for partisan reasons.

“If you’re not a fan of the Senate-wide filibuster, you’re probably not a fan of a filibuster by one senator,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, referring to the practice of senators blocking nominees from their states.

Next up, abolish the Ninth?