We’re barely a few days into the political debate over the future of the Supreme Court. Bush probably won’t announce his nominee until next week, at the earliest. And yet, the fight has already turned in at least one very odd direction.
While some focused on whom Bush’s choice will be, others mapped out strategy for the period after he decides. Senate Republicans made plans to begin hearings as quickly as possible after the nomination, focused not on the candidate’s positions on hot-button issues but on legal credentials.
A Republican planning document provided to The Washington Post described the need to avoid disclosing the nominee’s “personal political views or legal thinking on any issue.”
That’s not a typo. GOP talking points insist that once a nominee appears before the Senate, lawmakers not even talk about the would-be justice’s approach to the law on given issues.
It’s one thing to suggest, as the Republican planning memo does, that the nominee avoid discussing her or her political views. This is the first Supreme Court vacancy in 11 years, and this judge will replace the key swing vote on the high court, so it’s likely his or her political views will come up anyway, but let’s not dwell on this. The bigger problem is what, exactly, the confirmation hearings will focus on if the nominee avoids discussing “legal thinking on any issue.”
In other words, the nominee, as far as Republicans are concerned, should not only steer clear of questions regarding their personal views on, say, abortion, but her or she should also not publicly discuss thoughts on the legal approach to privacy issues.
If the Senate actually pursues this course, we’ll likely see some very brief confirmation hearings. Indeed, as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) put it, Republicans expect the Senate to tell the nominee, “OK, tell us where you went to law school and what your career was; and have you ever broken the law? You’re on the Supreme Court.”
This, obviously, won’t do. Fortunately, we have the Specter Standard to fall back on.
Over the weekend, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) was on Meet the Press to discuss the pending vacancy, and was confronted with a quote from the book he wrote just a few years ago. Specter wrote:
[T]he Senate should resist, if not refuse to confirm Supreme Court nominees who refuse to answer questions on fundamental issues. In voting on whether or not to confirm a nominee, senators should not have to gamble or guess about a candidate’s philosophy, but should be able to judge on the basis of the candidate’s expressed views.
When asked if he stood behind his own words, Specter said the statement “is true, just like all the rest of the book.”
It’s exactly the point Dems need to rely on in the coming months. Republicans plainly believe that this nominee shouldn’t have to deal with substantive legal or issue-related questions at all, but the Specter Standard shows us the way around such nonsense. Indeed, as far as the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is concerned, the Senate should “refuse to confirm Supreme Court nominees who refuse to answer questions on fundamental issues.”
Simple and straightforward, isn’t it? It’s a point worth remembering as the process unfolds.