After he assumed control of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the mid-1990s, Senator Hatch began to rigorously enforce a blue slip policy under which nominations could not move forward without the consent of both home state Senators. In 1998, this policy was made explicit on the blue slips themselves, which stated that “[n]o further proceedings on this nominee will be scheduled until both blue slips have been returned by the nominee’s home state senators.”

Senator Jesse Helms used his blue slip to block any action on all African-American nominees to the Fourth Circuit for more than four years.

ASSOCIATED PRESS (4/24/01): Senate Republicans are being accused by Democrats of trying to make it easier for President Bush to fill the federal bench with conservatives by doing away with a practice that allows a single home-state senator to easily defeat any nomination... At issue is the so-called "blue slip" tradition, referring to the blue-colored approval papers that senators are asked to submit on nominees for filling vacant federal judgeships in their state. When Democrats controlled the Senate, they allowed judicial nominees from Republican Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush to move forward if just one senator from a state submitted a blue slip. After Republicans took control of the Senate in 1994, new Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, refused to move a nomination from Democrat Clinton forward unless he had blue slip approvals from both senators. Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina used the tactic to block all of Clinton's court nominees from his state. Democrats say Hatch wants to eliminate that policy so they can't block the new Republican president's nominees.

Now, however, Hatch has apparently declared a new policy saying that even though a senator’s decision not to return a blue slip would be given great weight, it would not be allowed to prevent Hatch from moving nominees he wants to move. “In other words,” says Hatch, “we can go ahead with certain nominees where you might have a withheld blue slip.”