Why popular opinion should not be allowed to select justices

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SEEKING JUSTICES: THE JUDGING OF SUPREME COURT NOMINEES

By Michael Comiskey

University of Kansas, $40 cloth/$19.95 paper, 256 pages

REVIEWED BY BRUCE FEIN

Michael Comiskey, an associate professor of political science at Penn State University, writes complacently in "Seeking Justices: The Judging of Supreme Court Nominees" about the routine Senate vetting of nominees for judicial philosophy and public popularity. His complacency is misguided. The Senate confirmation process should be modified to provide greater insulation from uninformed popular opinion.

An unprecedented 10 years have elapsed with no vacancies since the 1994 appointment of Justice Stephen Breyer; at least one seat is likely to open during the next White House term. The topic of confirmation is thus timely.

The process for appointing justices was revolutionized for the worse with the nomination and defeat of Robert H. Bork in 1987. He arrived before the U.S. Senate with the most glittering credentials since the appointment of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in 1930: He was an acclaimed teacher and author in antitrust and constitutional law; solicitor general of the United States; an unsung Watergate hero who had insisted on the appointment of a credible successor to special prosecutor Archibald Cox to investigate President Richard M. Nixon; and he had a sterling record as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit.

In 1986, Justice Antonin Scalia had been unanimously confirmed by the Senate, and Mr. Bork had voted with the associate justice in 400 of the 402 cases when the two had sat together on the court of appeals. Moreover, Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987, had opined to the Philadelphia Inquirer after Mr. Scalia's confirmation that Mr. Bork would be an acceptable appointment if a new Supreme Court vacancy opened, which it did with the retirement of Justice Lewis Powell.

Mr. Bork's exacting intellect would have made an inestimable contribution to constitutional law. Like physics, which was transformed by the geniuses Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, enlightened constitutional jurisprudence has been the handiwork of a few giants. They include Chief Justices John Marshall and Charles Evans Hughes and Associate Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis. Mr. Bork promised to add to this priceless pantheon.