In case you’ve been sleeping or drunk for the past two months, here’s what you have missed: For the first time since 1994 (which was two years into Bill Clinton’s presidency) there is a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
After Sandra Day O’Connor retired earlier this summer, President Bush nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist died earlier this month and Bush elevated Roberts’ nomination to replace Rehnquist. Bush has yet to nominate a second person for the Supreme Court.
The confirmation process of Roberts and the yet-to-be-named second candidate could possibly be the most important political events of this early millennium. If you look back over the last 50 or 60 years you’ll quickly see the magnitude of recent Supreme Court decisions. Some see Brown v.Board of Education; others see Roe v.Wade.
The Supreme Court has made decisions about prayer in schools, abortion, civil rights and a presidential election, and yet few Americans are following the Supreme Court proceedings.
The American judiciary system has become a political bargaining tool, with politicians and analysts encouraging the president to choose nominees not upon their legal and judicial merits, but rather upon how well they will be received by his opponents.
Confirmation hearings have degraded into political circuses, with leaders of both sides using them as a televised stage to score political points.
Case in point: At the opening of Roberts’ confirmation hearing, some committee members invoked the recent tragedy in New Orleans to criticize government leaders and federal policies and to question what Roberts would have done in a leadership position.
Shockingly enough, the Supreme Court has nothing to do with the federal response to natural disasters; in fact, it has nothing to do with making any public policy whatsoever.
It is encouraging to know that the politicians leading this committee are fighting one another to simply get another sound bite on the news or another quote in a wire article.
Consider for a moment what cases the Supreme Court could be ruling upon in the coming years. California’s legislature recently approved pro-gay marriage legislation despite the fact that California voters rejected the measure just five years ago. Gov. Schwarzenegger is set to veto the measure, saying he will not go against the will of the voters of California.
Activists in California and throughout the United States are looking to the courts to decide the matter at hand and the secondary matter at hand: that of the relationship between the will of the voters (specifically, a vote on a measure) and the role of Congress.
Give it five or ten years, but this case, or one like it, is sure to end up on the desk of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The issue at hand is not John Roberts or George W. Bush or Edward Kennedy. It is not about what individual has written what argument 20 years ago for a client or a friend.
Today’s political structure and ideals have trivialized the Supreme Court and the political process. When reporters and political hacks dig into the adoption records of a nominee, the process has simply become sensationalized, cable-quality news.
This isn’t a problem of a biased media or a Democratic smear campaign. Odds are that this would happen if the roles of the political parties were reversed.
This is a problem of a culture obsessed with celebrities and tabloids, of a culture that needs to know every inch of every national character’s private life.
Once the confirmation hearing is over, let’s hope that the senators turn the cameras off, walk away from the reporters and try to listen to their constituents needs for once.
But then again, it is only 1,146 days until the next presidential election and some of them have to start their campaigns. Looks like cable news has got a headline story to run—for the next three years.
Dean Simmer is a Hillsdale College senior majoring in history.