Story highlights Supreme Court nominations have gone off track when a president overplayed his hand

Another issue can stem from a presidential administration slipping up on candidate vetting

(CNN) Derailing a president's choice for the US Supreme Court is difficult. But it has happened eight times in the last half-century, through the kind of Senate combat that led to the 1987 defeat of Robert Bork and administration missteps like the 2005 case of Harriet Miers.

President Donald Trump said he would announce his proposed successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia next Thursday. Senate Democrats and their liberal allies, outraged over last year's unprecedented refusal to consider President Barack Obama's nominee, have vowed to fight a right-wing choice.

The stakes are significant for the law in America and any check by the judiciary on the executive branch. Unlike a president's Cabinet choices, who are limited to his term in office, the nine justices serve for life.

The current court is one of the most ideologically polarized ever. Important disputes over civil rights, criminal procedure and corporate regulation often come down to the vote of a single justice.

In the past five decades, nominations have gone off track when a president overplayed his hand or his administration slipped up on candidate vetting. An instance of the latter involved US appeals court judge Douglas Ginsburg, who President Ronald Reagan selected in 1987. Ginsburg withdrew after reports that he smoked marijuana when he was a Harvard law professor in the 1970s.

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