I really enjoy the nomination hearings for Supreme Court nominees. Unlike lower federal judges at least the Supreme court nominee is gauranteed a hearing and most likely a vote.
The one thing that has struck me the last few go rounds is how the whole process is really geared towards candidates who are able to say as little as possible. If hearings are for the purpose of cross examination or fact finding, shouldn’t the process reward candidates who are forthcoming? No, I’m sorry it doesn’t work that way in the Senate. This isn’t unique to the Senate, it is rampant feature of almost any large group of humans.
One thing I appreciate about the current candidate, Sonia Sotomayor is her resume. She has 17 years of experience on the Federal bench. Lately, it seems like President’s favor candidates with a very short public record as to avoid controversy. So normally you pick candidates with no track record and the hearing that rewards the candidate who says the least. In fact Justice Scalia even declined to answer a question on “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison” in his Senate hearing in case the issue came up again and he had to rule on it.
So what is the point; what do the hearings accomplish? I think they are mainly theater – Senators primping in front of the camera hoping that their constituency will remember their speech in the guise of a question. No surprise really, lawyers are taught to only ask question for which they already have the answer.
So what’s my fascination with this giant waste of time? I think it’s because deep down I really believe that our constitution matters a great deal and this is one of the rare occasions when people actually publicly debate the interesting issues. We’ll forget soon enough when the next celebrities bites the dust, but it’s great to see the interest every few years.
