I have CNN on in the background, and Senator Leahy is questioning John Roberts. Now, I’m playing on the computer and I have to go in for a root canal in a couple of hours; so I’m not paying that much attention. But from what I’m hearing, it sounds as if Roberts is refusing to answer certain questions because they might (or are likely) to come up in cases that come before the Supreme Court.
Isn’t that sort of the point of the hearings? To find out which way the new justice will lean on certain issues? I’d be like, ‘Well if you’re not going to answer direct questions, then you are trying to hide something. If you’re trying to hide something, then you should not be made a justice – let alone Chief Justice. I move that these hearings be closed and John Roberts’s nomination be declined.’
I just see no reason why we should not know what kind of person is standing for the position. A justice may (will) be on the bench for generations. I think we should know what we’re getting.
I don’t know, I think it’s possible to get an idea of how the guy might answer such questions without having him actually answer them. We know just about everything else about him, right? Plus, I can understand his reluctance to address questions that might come up in future Supreme Court cases: he needs to be free to answer the question when it does come before the Supreme Court. If right now he says “I think A,” but then when that case comes up and he weighs all of the arguments and has ample time to consider his decision he decides “I think B,” I could see that maybe being an issue.
All of this said, I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe he could say whatever the hell he wants right now and it wouldn’t mean a darn thing later (when he dons the robe and is on the bench and all), but my immediate, uninformed reaction to hearing about his refusal to answer certain questions isn’t suspicion or distrust. <shrug>
It’s a tight balancing act, and I haven’t watched any of the Roberts hearings, so I don’t know how he’s doing. But there are competing interests. First, it is wrong for a judge to describe in detail how certain issues should be resolved, because judges – esp. federal judges – decides existing cases, with their own factual circumstances and procedural history. It is unconstitutional for judges to give advisory opinions, and it impugns the court’s credibility and impartiality if the judges have publicly made up their minds before they even start to read a case. On the other hand, the Constitution gives the Senate a role in cnfirming judges, and they have to have the information necessary to intelligently fulfill that function. The typical formulation is that the senator asks a question, the nominee gives some general words on the subject, but then says he cannot speculate further outside the particular facts of a given case. Then, the senators just have to decide if that’s good enough.
It’s hard to say how the affects the ability of a judge to get confirmed. Robert Bork answered every question put to him, and he got voted down, whereas most of the justices on the current court kept their mouths shut and got confirmed – even in the face of a frequently opposition-controlled Senate. OTOH, after the Saturday Night Massacre I don’t think Bork could have gotten confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate even if he personally saved every one of the Judiciary Committee’s children from a burning building, so it’s not really clear to me what role keeping your mouth shut actually plays.
In this particular case it makes little difference what Roberts says. Absent a finding that he eats babies for brunch or something he’s going to be confirmed.
But yeah, he and any other judicial nominee is correct not to answer specific questions on how they’d rule on specific issues that may come before them on the bench. The best way IMHO for Senators to elicit information on their views is to ask them how they would have ruled on past cases. “Was Roe v Wade correctly decided?” for example.
Although, wasn’t it Thomas who claimed that, despite being in law school at the time Roe was handed down, he’d never discussed the decision with anyone or put any real thought into the issue? Given his practice of sitting mute on the bench during oral argument I now believe him, but at the time I felt that he had to have been lying under oath. I found it impossible to believe that a law student in the 70s could make it all the way through law school without thinking about Roe, but I’m convinced that Clarence Thomas managed it.
People seem to forget that Ruth Bader Ginsberg refused to answer questions put to her; but I guess different rules apply depending on which way the candidate is perceived to lean.
I have been told by a law school colleague who used to work at the Supreme Court that Thomas is really smart and engaging if you can drw him out of his shell.