This is odd:
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) plans to review the Senate testimony of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito to determine if their reversal of several long-standing opinions conflicts with promises they made to senators to win confirmation.
. . .
Specter, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, who served as chairman during the hearings, said he wants to examine whether Roberts and Alito have “lived up” to their assurances that they would respect legal precedents.
Apparently, Senator Specter is surprised by the rulings of these two justices. I’m not sure why, as this is the direction the rightist base has been clamoring the Court to take for years. I would have been more surprised if Roberts and Alito had voted differently.
Anyway, the damage has been done. Specter should have thought about this before he voted for the justices’ lifetime appointment. Reviewing their testimony isn’t going to any good now.
So why go though this exercise? Allegedly, to improve the process:
Judicial independence is “so important,” Specter said, but an examination could help with future nominations. “I have done a lot of analyzing and have come to the conclusion that these nominees answer just as many questions as they have to.”
Unless nominees are required to start answering questions about hot issues before the court, I’m unconvinced much can be done to make these confirmation hearings informative. As they stand now, hearings are a bump that only derail nominations in three situations:
(1) If they uncover an undisclosed bad act,
(1) If they reveal controversial statements the nominee has made, or
(2) If they demonstrate that the nominee is totally incompetent (see Harriet Miers).
What hearings do not do (if the nominee is careful) is weed out nominees based on their testimony regarding judicial philosophy. Nominees can dodge almost all land mines on that front by refusing to comment on existing cases before the Court.
So Senator Specter can wring his hands about confirmation testimony if he wants. But he should really give more weight to the nominee’s record and less weight to what they say in the hearings.