Supreme Court hearings are broken, both parties say. How they can be fixed.
One hundred years ago, they didn’t hold confirmation hearings for the United States Supreme Court.
Backlash to Louis Brandeis’ nomination – fueled in part by his Jewish faith, scholars say – led the Senate to hold its first ever public confirmation hearing for a high court nominee in 1916. Justice Brandeis himself wasn’t required to speak, but the precedent had been set.
Hearings became routine. In 1939, Felix Frankfurter became the first nominee to testify at his own confirmation hearing. In those hearings, Justice Frankfurter declined to answer many questions, saying his public record spoke for itself.
In many ways we have returned to those times, experts say, if we ever left them at all. In recent decades, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have pressed nominees to discern
Robert Bork’s nominationSettled law ... or correct law?
