I haven't read or heard anything yet about Sotomayor's first day before the Senate Judiciary Committee. No doubt the network news this evening will spare 60 seconds or so for it, when they get done with yet another rehash of Michael Jackson trivia, and of course I can get all kinds of buzz online if I want, but actually it's a conscious decision to avoid immediate exposure to the political circus the confirmation of a new Supreme Court Justice has become.
As the trend to make confirmation a political football has grown stronger over recent decades, my concern has been that ultimately, the process would lead to politicization of the Court's legal decisions. That time seemed to come definitively when the Supreme Court injected itself (well, more precisely, allowed itself to be drawn) into the U.S. Presidential election of 2000. Not just that, however. Increasingly we see that issues the Court has decided in the past (like Roe v. Wade) or those that it is likely to address in future, become political ones, with one side or another in Congress always prepared to turn one or another issue into a litmus test for confirmation.
The Founders wisely did not make Supreme Court Justice an elective office. Possibly working from the "greater idiot" theory, they did include a role for Congress. This can be forgiven, since they probably had no inkling of how far off course the confirmation process could go. But I'd certainly like to see us get back to a more honest procedure in which the Committee focuses on the judicial qualifications of a nominee, the scope of his/her arguments and opinions, without so much concern about his/her personal views or their political coloration. The decisions we depend on the Supreme Court for are legal, not political ones; and while of course there's no way completely to separate one from the other, those to whom the confirmation decision is entrusted should try. Much harder.
That's the new justice we need.
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