Sen. Kennedy, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, shows how the judicial confirmation process has been badly damaged in the Bush administration, with candidates’ opaqueness and promises of fair-mindedness being no more than empty promises abandoned for partisan agendas once on the bench:
[T]he careful, bipartisan [judicial confirmation] process of years past — like so many checks and balances rooted in our Constitution — has been badly broken by the current Bush administration. The result has been the confirmation of two justices, John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr., whose voting record on the court reflects not the neutral, modest judicial philosophy they promised the Judiciary Committee, but an activist’s embrace of the administration’s political and ideological agenda.
Now that the votes are in from their first term, we can see plainly the agenda that Roberts and Alito sought to conceal from the committee. Our new justices consistently voted to erode civil liberties, decrease the rights of minorities and limit environmental protections. At the same time, they voted to expand the power of the president, reduce restrictions on abusive police tactics and approve federal intrusion into issues traditionally governed by state law.
He goes on to discuss how the nomination process should be reformed:
The discussion should start with a few truths. First, any qualified nominee to the Supreme Court will have spent many years thinking about legal issues. We should require that nominees share that thinking with the Judiciary Committee, and not pretend that such candor is tantamount to prejudging specific cases. In particular, the Senate should have the same access to the nominee’s writings as the administration.
