Confirmation Hearing Quotes

Filling a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court is a solemn process for our nation, and I hope Senate consideration of Judge Barrett will not descend into the dishonorable spectacle that Americans witnessed during the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

You never know what’s going to happen at a confirmation hearing.

In my first week as a U.S. senator, I had the privilege of participating in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

When I had my confirmation hearing for the Court of Appeals, [my son] Philip was 3 years old. And when I was called up to the chair he took it upon himself to run up and sit next to me in case any hard questions came up.

This is beginning to sound more like a canonization hearing than a confirmation hearing.

When Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was before us in 1993, she said that her standard was to give no hints, no forecasts, no previews, and declined to answer dozens of questions.

And in that confirmation process, I sat for 17 hours in front of a senate judiciary committee.

I have no personal vendetta against Clarence Thomas. I seek only to provide the committee with information which it may regard as relevant.

The President [Barack Obama] had suggested that I not watch the news during the confirmation process. I assiduously followed his advice.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg came in front of the Senate and was approved 96-3 to be on the Supreme Court to replace conservative justice Byron White. This is in 1993.Now, Justice Ginsburg, it was noted earlier, was a general counsel for the ACLU, certainly a liberal group. It was abundantly clear during the confirmation hearing that Ginsburg would swing the balance of the court to the left.But because President [Bill] Clinton won the election and because Justice Ginsburg clearly had the intellectual ability and integrity to serve on the court, she was confirmed.

The president does not have any obligation to make a consensus appointment here. What the president's obligation is, is to pick a judicial conservative, and I believe that's what he's gonna do.

The most important rule for a nominee in a confirmation hearing is the 80/20 rule. If they are talking 80% of the time and you are talking 20%, you’re winning. If its 60/40, it means you are arguing. If it is 50/50, it means you have lost and you’d better throw in the towel.

What I wanted was for everyone listening to understand that these things mattered - not necessarily for me, but in this particular forum they mattered in terms of whether of not we were getting a person who should sit on the Supreme Court.

I don't like to see facts twisted, untruths fabricated to give the [Supreme Court] nominee a black eye, even before he comes before Senate committee.

When I went through my confirmation hearing to serve as surgeon general they asked me what my priorities would be and I didn't list loneliness in that priority list because it was not one at the time.

I think even Republicans are saying [Andrew] Puzder may have a problem.

I remember George Mitchell - I was doing the Clarence Thomas hearing, and there were 48 senators declared they were not prepared to vote for him at the front end. We could have filibustered that and stopped it. George and I - George was the leader at the time - took the heat from every liberal group saying, "No, no, that's not the way the system is supposed to work, since the Constitution - the president shall propose and the Constitution shall dispose, we're going to let them hear this."

The reason the Betsy DeVos case was the centerpiece case for the Democrats wasn't about her weakness as a knowledgeable person on education policy.

I feel very confident that that information should be sufficient for the members of the Senate to make an informed decision about John Roberts' qualifications.

When I wrote the Anita Hill book I believed everything I wrote was accurate.