In the coming days Senate Republicans will decide if they support reviewing Judge Kavanaugh’s entire record. Some are already hedging. And Senator Mitch McConnell is warning that Democrats will pay a political cost if they insist on obtaining Judge Kavanaugh’s full record, which may delay a vote on his confirmation.

My response: Democrats should not worry. And Senator McConnell’s complaints about possible delays for a Supreme Court nomination ring hollow after he stonewalled Merrick Garland’s nomination to the court in 2016.

The methodical review of a federal court nominee’s record is not optional. It is the most fundamental part of the Senate’s constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent. Just last week, such vetting led to the withdrawal of a circuit court nominee with a record of offensive college writings. This process must be even more exhaustive for nominees to our nation’s highest court. And not long ago it was treated that way on both sides of the aisle.

Republicans need only look back to Justice Elena Kagan who, like Judge Kavanaugh, had served in the White House. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time, I worked with Senator Jeff Sessions, then the committee’s ranking Republican, to request the full universe of her documents from the Clinton Presidential Library. Crucially, President Barack Obama made no claims of executive privilege. Less than 1 percent of the documents were withheld on personal privacy grounds. And to this day her emails are posted online for the world to see.

I also supported Senator Sessions’s request for documents related to military recruitment at Harvard while Justice Kagan was dean of the law school. It was beyond the scope of our committee’s usual practice. But I agreed with Senator Sessions that the records would be of public interest and therefore ought to be subject to public scrutiny.