Make Sotomayor's confirmation hearings worth hearing

By GottaLaff

From the L.A. Times op-ed page:

Here are five ways that the White House, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) can try to impose a new order to the proceedings without taking away the Senate's important "advise and consent" role.

* Invite, cajole and beg former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to appear before the committee as a witness to discuss and debunk the myth of "judicial activism." [...]

* Invite a panel of distinguished judges, "liberal" and "conservative," to discuss the extent to which federal appeals court judges are required consistently to "make policy" when they interpret ambiguous statutory language given to them by lawmakers who practice the art of compromise at the expense of clarity. [...]

* Demand of Sonia Sotomayor that she eschew the "Ginsburg rule" -- refusing to answer questions on cases or controversies she might have to resolve as a justice. She should answer such questions and perhaps even offer her personal views about certain legal standards and doctrines. She can do this without guaranteeing that she'll vote a certain way in a certain case. [...]

* Require all committee members to be physically in the room during the hearing unless there is a pending vote -- and make sure there are no pending votes. [...]

* Dramatically limit the time each senator receives for on-camera speechmaking while the nominee is in the chair. We all know what each senator thinks -- their tribunes issue copies of the speeches and post them online. [...]

In a perfect world, confirmation hearings would be an invaluable exercise in constitutional democracy and a wonderful lesson for students of law, politics and governance. Instead, they have become unworthy of the nobility of their place in our system of separation of powers. Someone needs to fix that. And it might as well be these guys, at this time, with this nominee, in these circumstances.