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Supreme Court Nominees Should Disclose Views On Constitutional Issues, USA Today Opinion Piece States

One thing that "has been conspicuously absent" from the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "substance," Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, writes in a USA Today opinion piece. According to Turley, "The vast majority of questions and answers remained on a shallow and predictable level where Sotomayor did little more than describe current doctrines and case law -- avoiding disclosures of her own views." He continues, "What is most striking is how Sotomayor"s statements were virtually identical to both her conservative and liberal predecessors," including her comments that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are "the precedent of the court."Turley writes, "The content-light character in these hearings is largely the product of the "Ginsburg rule" -- named after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who refused to answer questions in her 1993 confirmation hearing about any case or matter upon which she might later vote." According to Turley, "Later nominees for both parties have relied on the Ginsburg rule to turn the hearings into prolonged photo-ops for senators, who largely ask wafer-thin questions to solicit largely scripted answers." The rule "allows nominees to get by with meaningless sound bites that promise to respect precedent, the Framers [of the Constitution] and collegiality in general," he adds. Furthermore, it "tells the public nothing about a nominee"s philosophy or purpose before giving her life tenure on the world"s most powerful court," Turley writes.According to Turley, there is a "simple solution to returning substance to the confirmation process: End the Ginsburg rule by insisting that nominees answer questions about their specific views on constitutional rights." Although "the current system works well for presidents, nominees and senators," it "does little for the public or the system of justice," he writes (Turley, USA Today, 7/16). Buy arimidex to treat cancer.

Media Devotes Little Attention To Sotomayor's Catholicism Compared With Conservative Nominees, WSJ Columnist Writes

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor would be the sixth Roman Catholic currently on the court if she is confirmed, but there have been no more than "a few scattered references to this fact," Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn writes. He continues that "for the most part the judge"s religion has been greeted, as a USA Today headline put it, with a "yawn."" McGurn adds, "How different from just a few years ago," when Catholics Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts were nominated by former President George W. Bush.According to McGurn, when Alito was a Supreme Court nominee, "talk was about the "fifth Catholic" on the bench." He adds that Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal "complained that "with Alito, the majority of the court would be Roman Catholics."" McGurn writes that prior to the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts, the Los Angeles Times "ran a piece headlined, "Wife of Nominee Holds Strong Antiabortion Views."" According to the Times, Roberts" wife worked for Feminists for Life, and the paper "characterized [her] as an "extremely, extremely devout Catholic,"" McGurn writes."It"s possible, of course, that Democrats and their allies in the media and activist community no longer regard Catholics with the suspicion they did back when ... Bush"s nominees were up for consideration," according to McGurn. "More likely, the relatively soft reaction to Ms. Sotomayor"s Catholicism is because of a calculation that when it comes to hot-button issues such as abortion or gay marriage, she doesn"t really believe what her church teaches," he writes.McGurn continues that if the "indifference" to "Sotomayor"s Catholicism were truly a sign of a new respect for the "no religious test" provisions of the Constitution, that would be something to celebrate." He concludes, "But in the unlikely case that this "wise Latina" ever comes to see the legal wisdom of overturning [Roe v. Wade] and returning abortion to the democratic process, we"ll be reading a very different story" (McGurn, Wall Street Journal, 7/14).

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