Supreme Court Judge hearings serve no purpose?
Posted by Moonage on 12 Jan 2006 | Tagged as: Opinions
Wrong. Completely and totally wrong.
Senator Joe Biden then added:
Americans should know how a nominee interprets the Constitution on key social views, but since nominees refuse to discuss their interpretations, citing the possibility they€™d have to rule on them in the future, the hearings serve no real purpose, Biden said.
Yes they do. They show us how the nominee is going to respond to pressure. And, when it comes to law, there is no more pressure than being a Supreme Court Judge. The circumstances under Bush in my opinion illustrate perfectly how important this process is. John Roberts Jr sailed through the process. The confirmation process acclimated Roberts to the public in a way Bush couldn’t do. It exposed every secret he had ( plaid pants etc. ), and he survived looking better than he began. There is nothing in his past that he has to worry about sitting on the bench and determining what the entire legal community of the United States will do. It was exposed. It’s done. Harriet Ellan Miers on the other hand wilted under the spotlight. No particular damning evidence came out about her, but she seemed uncomfortable and aloof. Even if she would have survived the confirmation process, those are not personality traits that would have served her well as a Judge. Samuel Alito KNEW this one was going to be a bloodbath. He KNEW coming in that his vote was the one that was going to swing the courts to a conservative political philosophy. He KNEW Kennedy would be coming after him. He KNEW all these things. If he wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with all of this, then he would not have been mentally prepared to deal with all the pressure of the media and politics of pushing the Supreme Court in a philosophical direction contradictory to the philosophy of mainstream media. As much heat as he’s getting right now, it’s not going to stop once the confirmation is over. The only fault I have with Alito so far is he (they) didn’t prepare his wife for what was to come.
This is an important process, if nothing else, to weed out those that aren’t mentally prepared to deal with the heat of the position. Just because the Democrats haven’t been able to do this process in an organized fashion does not prove the system is broken.
2 Comments »
on 12 Jan 2006 at 12:10 pm 1.American Phoenix
said …
I don’t think you can really fault them that they didn’t prepare Alito’s wife enough for what was to come. Surely they knew CAP was going to be brought up and told them about it. I don’t think there would be any preparation sufficient to hear your husband and loved one called a bigot in so many ways. Eventually, you would reach your breaking point. So I don’t fault the preparation process or the victim for that.
There is another reason why confirmation hearings are important. This is virtually the only opportunity that the public has to hear a nominee speak in language that is intelligible and not legalese. Once a nominee is confirmed to a court, they’re writing opinions - not talking in public. Expecting the average citizen to wade through 150 page legal opinions to figure out where a justice stands on a position and why isn’t realistic (although it would be the ideal given so much misreporting on legal issues).
Further, its also useful - as we’ve seen in this instance - for people to know just how far their state Senators are willing to go in an attempt to smear the reputation of an innocent person out of political motivations. They might just be willing to vote them out of office!
on 12 Jan 2006 at 1:03 pm 2.Moonage
said …
Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely not faulting the victim here. But, from life experience, I do know what it’s like to have a family member grilled like Alito got yesterday. If you know it’s going to happen and how, it helps a lot to protect yourself when it does happen. It’s not pleasant under any circumstnaces, but it doesn’t shock you when it happens. My gut feeling is she didn’t see this coming quite as well as she should have. That’s definitely not her fault or Judge Alito’s.
“They might just be willing to vote them out of office!”
I’m willing to bet you my bottom dollar that not one single judiciary committee member in this process will be voted out. “Stick with the devil you know” runs deep in politics. Lord knows Kennedy’s had a lot worse to offer Massachusetts in the past, but they just keep voting for him. I wish people cared more, but they don’t. It’s the devil they know.
And your comment on letting the people meet the candidate is dead on. I should have listed that myself. I was approaching the issue purely from the nominee perspective.
Thanks for the comment, I like your style. Please come back more often!