A Hearing About Nothing (Wash. Post)

[kurth]

Washington Post
January 13, 2006
A Hearing About Nothing
By E. J. Dionne Jr.

... It turns out that, especially when their party controls the process, Supreme Court nominees can avoid answering any question they don't want to answer. Senators make the process worse with meandering soliloquies. But when the questioning gets pointed, the opposition is immediately accused of scurrilous smears. The result: an exchange of tens of thousands of words signifying, in so many cases, nothing -- as long as the nominee has the discipline to say nothing, over and over and over.

Alito, an ardent baseball fan, established himself as the Babe Ruth of evasion.

The headlines went to the abortion issue. Alito was pressed about his statement in a 1985 job application letter to the Reagan administration that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." It is a reasonable view shared by millions of Americans. Republican Sens. Sam Brownback (Kan.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) were refreshingly open in their denunciations of Roe v. Wade. But Alito would neither embrace nor back away from what he had said. He did allow that "there is a general presumption that decisions of the court will not be overruled." Well, yeah.

When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked Alito if the issue was "well-settled in court," he offered the celebrated formulation: "I think that depends on what one means by the term 'well-settled.' " The standard dodge is that nominees can't answer questions bearing on cases they might later have to decide. But Democrats Feinstein, Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) all noted that Alito was perfectly happy to speak expansively on some questions he would face, notably reapportionment....

My biggest worries about Alito are how he would rule on presidential power, workers' rights, civil rights and regulatory issues. Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor, has noted that Alito follows the law when it's clear, but he almost always tilts toward his conservative predilections when the law is less settled.

Democrats seem to be wary of mounting a filibuster. What they should insist upon, to use a euphemism Alito might appreciate, is an extended debate in which his evasions will be made perfectly clear to the public. If moderate senators want to vote for a justice highly likely to move the Supreme Court to the right, they can. But their electorates should know that's exactly what they're doing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/12/AR2006011201502.html

[OneBlueSky]

1. "The Seinfeld Hearings" . . . good title . . . n/t

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