Senate Hearings Quotes

I think I'm pretty politically informed, and I find myself watching Senate hearings on C-SPAN.

Some of the most impressive judicial nominees are grossly mistreated.

While the president is to nominate that individual [to Supreme Court], we in the Senate must provide our advice and consent. This function is not well-defined. The Constitution does not set down a road map. It does not require hearings. In fact, it does not even require questioning on your understanding of the Constitution nor the role of the Supreme Court.

Senator, my answer is that the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court requires that nominees before this committee for a position on that court not forecast, give predictions, give hints, about how they might rule in cases that might come before the Supreme Court,.

For a long time in American history, people didn't even come up before the Senate. They didn't come before the Judiciary Committee, and up until about 1923, something like that.

I've always given presidents the benefit of the doubt on their nominees.

Justices are not politicians. They don't run on a political platform, and senators should not ask them to do so.

Joe McCarthy and his Senate hearings were like witch-hunts.

While Roberts wanted to give the impression he respected the right to privacy and the precedent of Roe vs. Wade, his answers look dangerously similar to the responses (Associate Justice) Clarence Thomas gave senators during his confirmation hearings 14 years ago.

The question for the Republicans running the confirmation hearings in the United States Senate is whose rules are they going to use?

It is galling to see such mendacious hypocrites as Kennedy and Biden at the Senate Judiciary Committee sitting in judgment on distinguished jurists.

The president-elect Donald Trump moved a bit closer to getting his Cabinet in place with another round of confirmation hearings. The most contentious was for his treasury secretary pick, Steven Mnuchin, a billionaire banker who worked at Goldman Sachs and owned a hedge fund. There was important news that came out during the hearing. Mnuchin said that he would support raising the debt ceiling sooner rather than later, and not risk the country defaulting.

Even before the hearings that led to confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts, senators were saying they were reserving judgment on how they would vote until they got to know him better at the hearings.

Nominees [to Supreme Court] shouldn't be expected to pre-commit to ruling on certain issues in a certain way. Nor should senators ask nominees to pledge to rule on issues in a particular way.

No matter how badly senators want to know things, judicial nominees are limited in what they may discuss. That limitation is real, and it comes from the very nature of what judges do.

Whenever anyone complains about the confirmation process, it means their guy is getting roughed up.

The role of the nominee in the confirmation process is like that of the bridegroom. Stay out of the way and be on time.

It's something, since the nomination and confirmation hearings of Justice Ginsberg, that's really become kind of an unwritten rule, this "I can't answer a question if it's a potential issue that's going to come before me on the Supreme Court." I think that most senators have come to accept that as a very legitimate answer. They don't love it, they're not happy, but it is legitimate when you put it in that context.

I had the privilege of chairing Judge Samuel Alito confirmation hearing in 1990. And at that time, he had practiced law for 14 years, but only represented one client, the United States government.

Presidents have the right to nominate their own cabinet secretaries. But their nominees don't have a right to confirmation. Senators have a constitutional duty to advise and consent to the appointment of all Cabinet officials. They should take that duty seriously.

Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn't meet his ideological standards. That's not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences.

It has been my experience that the hearings are really, in effect, a subtle minuet, with the nominee answering as many questions as he thinks necessary in order to be confirmed.