Spring Break
Obama must nominate best candidate for justice
Brandon Southward
Issue date: 5/6/09 Section: Forum
Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced last week he was retiring, setting off a political firestorm. Interest groups and important constituencies on both sides are rearing to do battle over the future of the Supreme Court. Conservative groups are calling for Republicans to take a stand and fight Obama's nominee. Hispanic groups are calling for the new justice to be Hispanic, while women's groups are petitioning for a woman nominee. Liberal groups want someone who is a young and an ardent liberal, a liberal counterpart to Chief Justice Roberts.
Congress has put in its two cents advising the White House; it wants Obama to look beyond the bench in finding a replacement, maybe a legal scholar or a politician. Interesting … a group of politicians arguing that picking a politician is a good idea. How shocking. So for Obama, picking the right justice is simple. The justice needs to be a Hispanic woman who is liberal, young, has background as a legal scholar - oh, and maybe even as a politician.
Herein lies the problem with the current way in which a Supreme Court Justice is picked. There are too many interest groups, too many constituencies to please and too many politicians grandstanding. The process of picking a justice has become an almost high-risk, no-reward proposition.
For weeks, various candidates are thrown out and every aspect of their professional and personal lives is dissected and analyzed by political pundits and ideologues on both sides of the aisle. Throw in the 24-hour news cycle and the invention of the blogger and you have a full-blown circus. Once a nominee survives that, he or she is then subject to contentious confirmation hearings where politicians are waiting to browbeat and ridicule the nominee. Congressional judiciary members trying to impress interest groups as well as their home districts forget that the hearings are not actually about them and their own knowledge of the Constitution.
Before a nominee can even get to that point, and before he or she is selected, a nominee must pass a litmus test, a tradition that goes back to the beginning of our democracy. President Obama now faces the problem that has caused his predecessors many headaches, embarrassments and, in most cases, regret.
Congress has put in its two cents advising the White House; it wants Obama to look beyond the bench in finding a replacement, maybe a legal scholar or a politician. Interesting … a group of politicians arguing that picking a politician is a good idea. How shocking. So for Obama, picking the right justice is simple. The justice needs to be a Hispanic woman who is liberal, young, has background as a legal scholar - oh, and maybe even as a politician.
Herein lies the problem with the current way in which a Supreme Court Justice is picked. There are too many interest groups, too many constituencies to please and too many politicians grandstanding. The process of picking a justice has become an almost high-risk, no-reward proposition.
For weeks, various candidates are thrown out and every aspect of their professional and personal lives is dissected and analyzed by political pundits and ideologues on both sides of the aisle. Throw in the 24-hour news cycle and the invention of the blogger and you have a full-blown circus. Once a nominee survives that, he or she is then subject to contentious confirmation hearings where politicians are waiting to browbeat and ridicule the nominee. Congressional judiciary members trying to impress interest groups as well as their home districts forget that the hearings are not actually about them and their own knowledge of the Constitution.
Before a nominee can even get to that point, and before he or she is selected, a nominee must pass a litmus test, a tradition that goes back to the beginning of our democracy. President Obama now faces the problem that has caused his predecessors many headaches, embarrassments and, in most cases, regret.
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