Legal scholarship highlight: The evolution of Supreme Court confirmation hearings

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Lori Ringhand and Paul Collins Guest

Posted Fri, March 25th, 2016 9:26 am

 

Legal scholarship highlight: The evolution of Supreme Court confirmation hearings

 

Lori A. Ringhand is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law. Paul M. Collins, Jr. is Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Director of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

 

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominations have become an important and highly visible part of the confirmation process. We have become accustomed to watching the senators and nominees participate in an exchange of ideas about the role of the Court and the Constitution in American life. Over the years, these exchanges – done under oath and in full public view – have become an important forum for democratic engagement with constitutional decision-making.

 

This type of engagement is essential to our system of self-government. Relatively few constitutional provisions are self-defining: text, precedent, and tradition often fail to generate single determinative answers to complex constitutional questions. In such cases, Supreme Court Justices necessarily make hard choices about constitutional meaning. Public engagement with the confirmation process is an important way in which our system ensures that those choices do not stray too far from the constitutional understandings of the American people.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/legal-scholarship-highlight-the-evolution-of-supreme-court-confirmation-hearings/