Lights, cameras...

Posted by Paulette Simpson

Posted: July 14, 2009 - 6:38 pm

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Broadcast live on C-SPAN, confirmation hearings for President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, began yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The first Supreme Court confirmation hearing I remember watching was that of Judge Robert Bork, nominated to the Court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan. It wasn’t pretty. Nor were the hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas who characterized the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching.”

Perhaps it’s because of the cameras and live coverage, but most politicians (of both parties) just can’t help themselves. They get puffed up and grandstand. It’s self indulgent and a waste of time. The same thing often happens to our own Alaska legislators when Gavel-to-Gavel cameras carry their floor speeches across the state.

The purpose of a judicial confirmation hearing should never have been for senators to preach, perform or recite a nominee’s narrative. The constitutional mandate for the Senate is to provide “advice and consent.” The hearings furnish an opportunity for the public to observe nominees responding to Senators’ questions about their legal qualifications and background, demonstrating their knowledge of the law, their judicial temperament and their grounding in the Constitution.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted that unless Judge Sotomayor “has a complete meltdown” she will be confirmed. He also expressed his belief that elections have consequences, saying that President Obama won the November election and he respects that reality.

When President Obama represented Illinois in the United States Senate, he played to his liberal base and voted against both of Pres. Bush’s nominees. Brilliant jurists, John Roberts and Samuel Alito were clearly qualified to serve on the Court and the 2004 election had been won decidedly by President Bush.

By way of contrast between Obama and another Harvard Law grad, in the forty years Sen. Ted Stevens represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate, he showed deference to the significance of national elections – and the Constitution – by voting to confirm every Supreme Court nominee who came before him. Those included the Court’s most liberal justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose likely voting patterns were not difficult to predict.

Confirmation hearings will focus on whether Judge Sotomayor will adhere to the proper role of a judge – thus the attention focused on the oath:

"I . . . do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God."

Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed and once she takes that oath she will not be bound by any of her previous statements or opinions but only by the Constitution. Still, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t side with her liberal colleagues most of the time.

Like many left-leaning justices before her, Judge Sotomayor (and the Constitution) will have been paid a great deal of respect from conservative senators who resisted the urge to politicize a constitutional duty. Who knows? She may even remember to pay some of it back.

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