Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other Public Ministers and Counsels, 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…." The nomination clause was one of the last provisions agreed to by the Constitutional Convention, and the phrase setting up the process for the nomination and confirmation of federal officials, members of the Supreme Court, and others, clearly meant different things to different framers of the Constitution and those who have followed. The participation of both the President and the Senate in the process was a compromise between two factions at the Convention who were concerned about the allocation of power. On the one side were men such as Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania who worried most about vesting too much power in the hands of a single individual. Franklin said that he was concerned that "The Executive will always be increasing, here as elsewhere, til it end in Monarchy." Their counterparts, men like James Madison of Virginia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and Alexander Hamilton of New York, wanted a strong executive with ultimate responsibility for choosing members of his administration, and who would not be as indebted to factions as they believed Senators might. "Good laws are of no effect without a good Executive; and there can be no good Executive without a responsible appointment of officers to execute," said Wilson during the convention debates. "Responsibility is in a manner destroyed by such an agency of the Senate." During the course of the debate and the many drafts of the Constitution, the power to nominate flowed from the President to the Senate and back. The final version of the phrase was defeated twice during the Convention before it was adopted on September 7, 1787. Hamilton believed that the clause gave the Senate a negative power, that of withholding its approval, which members would use only infrequently. It will be the office of the President to nominate , and with the advice and consent of the Senate to appoint . There will, of course, be no exertion of choice on the part of the Senators. They may defeat one choice of the Executive and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves choose —they can only ratify or reject the choice of the President. John Adams, however, thought the Senate would play a far bigger role. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787, Adams wrote that: You are apprehensive of monarchy, I of aristocracy. I would therefore, have given more power to the president, and less to the senate. The nomination and appointment to all offices I would have given to the President, assisted only by a privy council of his own creation; but not a vote or voice would I have given the Senate or any senator unless he were of the privy council. Faction and distraction are the sure and certain consequences of giving to a senate a vote on the distribution of offices. With such varied interpretations of the meaning of the phrase at its creation, it is no wonder that the proper role of the Senate in the nomination and confirmation process has been much disputed ever since. "While the Appointments Clause clearly vests in the president the power to identify individuals he wishes to place in confirmable offices," wrote political scientist Michael J. Gerhardt, "the Senate's official functions or duties in the appointments process are not so clear." The Senate has played a large role in the process during some administrations and a lesser role in others, which has been largely a function of the President's ability to translate his power into influence with Congress. Some Presidents, such as Thomas Jefferson, were able to both win confirmation of most of their nominees while largely retaining control over the choice of nominee. Others, such as President Abraham Lincoln, decided to share the power with the Senate, retaining sufficient influence over the positions to reap the rewards of patronage while giving the Senate enough authority to prevent many confirmation fights. Some Presidents, such as John Tyler, spent most of their tenure losing battle after battle to the Senate over confirmations. While much attention is paid to those who did not win confirmation by the Senate, most nominees do make it through the process. "For many a presidential appointee, the Senate must loom like an institutional black hole—an abyss that engulfs even the most luminous nominee. That impression is, in fact, mistaken," wrote congressional scholar Sarah A. Binder. "Most presidential nominees emerge from the Senate confirmation process and are eventually confirmed." Traditionally, the Senate has exerted the most influence over the appointment of federal judges, members of the Supreme Court, and independent agencies. The Senate has usually given a President wider latitude in selecting members of his Cabinet. "Generally, the Senate defers far more to a president's nominees to executive offices than to his nominees to judicial offices, particularly to the Supreme Court," according to Gerhardt. Since 1789, of the 158 nominations to the Supreme Court, 114 were confirmed and served. Seven of the remaining 44 were confirmed but refused the position, one died before he could take office, and 36 nominations were not confirmed. During the same time period, the Senate failed to confirm 15 Cabinet nominees out of the hundreds who have been nominated, the last being the nomination of former Senator John G. Tower (R-TX) to be Secretary of Defense in 1989. Over time, the Senate has developed or adapted practices to deal with the confirmation process, none of which are explicitly contained in Senate rules but all of which have been adhered to and recognized by the chamber at one time or another. These traditions emanate from a desire on the part of Senators to be involved not only in passing judgment on nominations but also in the actual selection of the nominee in the first place, particularly for federal judges. While Hamilton and others did not foresee this as the way the Senate would operate, it nevertheless became the norm for the Senate. In the course of time, the practice of consulting members of the Senate about appointments in their states was transformed into the custom of permitting them to name the person to be appointed, with the President retaining only a veto over their recommendations. When a vacancy on the federal bench occurs, "the attorney general, usually through his deputies, undertakes a search for possible nominees. At this early stage, the senators of the president's party are usually brought into the process." Individual Senators exercised their role in this process in different ways. They may have their own nominee or slate of nominees, or they may elect at this point to reserve judgment, preferring to react to the deputy attorney general's nominees. In any case, their role is crucial, some say determinative. Through the custom of senatorial courtesy, the senators may exercise a virtual veto over the president's choice. The extent and nature of this exercise of power varies considerably with the senator: some prefer wide consultation with state and local interests, giving those interests in effect the power of choice (in return, of course, for favors rendered); others jealously fight for this power to virtually dictate the choice of a particular nominee. Much of the process is informal and takes place behind closed doors, and not much has been written about it. From what has been written, it is clear that each state's process differs, as does each President's policy about consulting Senators. Some state delegations have agreements among office-holders about how the judicial selection process is to work. In others, there are commissions which are involved in the selection process, while in some states, there is no agreement at all. Since the first Congress, when Senators felt their desires were not being taken into account by the President, they developed institutional processes to make their displeasure known and protect what they saw as their role in the process. First, there developed the tradition of "senatorial courtesy," by which Senators could block confirmation of the confirmation of individuals from their home states. Along the same lines is the "blue slip," a tradition emanating from the Judiciary Committee, which can allow a home-state Senator to block a judicial nomination. Also, Senators have used the informal tradition of "holds" to prevent or delay the Senate from acting on a nomination. Senators also have used the tool of extended debate, known as a filibuster, to delay or prevent a nominee from being confirmed. There are other tools that the Senate has used less frequently, such as changing the qualifications needed to do a job or doing away with a position entirely. Some scholars have suggested that Congress deliberately reduced the number of positions on the Supreme Court to prevent President Andrew Johnson from winning confirmation of his nomination of Henry Stanbery to be an associate justice. No mention was made of this purpose during the debate on the law which shrank the court to six members from eight, but the size of the court was increased back to eight within two months of a new President taking office. Finally, it is within the discretion of the chair of a committee whether to hold a hearing on a nomination. One of the key ways a nomination dies is with no public action. In 1997, President Clinton withdrew the nomination of former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to be ambassador to Mexico after Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refused to hold a hearing on the nomination. The development of these practices is in keeping with what some Senators believe is the proper role of the Senate in the nomination and confirmation process. Then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-ME) said in 1992: The American Constitution does not assign different weights to the President's nominating power and the Senate's decision as to whether it shall 'advise and consent' to the confirmation of nominations. Instead, it establishes a process whereby the principal positions in our government can only be filled when the President and the Senate act jointly.