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Judging the judges-to-be

There are probably few countries in the world where a person nominated to be a justice of the highest court in the land is subjected to an "interrogation" by members of the legislature. Unusually, the US is one of those countries.

There have been questionable nominations - and confirmations. Clarence Thomas is one those.

The NY Times in an editorial counsels the Senate Judiciary Committee to take their task more seriously and probe more deeply, given a study just released which shows that what is said to the Committee is mostly not reflected in how the justice acts when on they eventually get onto the Bench.

"It is hard to imagine a more solemn responsibility than confirming the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. And we have worried, especially in recent years, that nominees are far too carefully packaged and coached on how to duck all of the hard questions.

A new study supports our fears: Supreme Court nominees present themselves one way at confirmation hearings but act differently on the court. That makes it difficult for senators to cast informed votes or for the public to play a meaningful role in the process.

The study — with the unwieldy title “An Empirical Analysis of the Confirmation Hearings of the Justices of the Rehnquist Natural Court” —published in Constitutional Commentary, looked at how nine long-serving justices answered Senate questions, and how they then voted on the court. While it does not say that any nominee was intentionally misleading, it still found a wide gap."

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