Panel takes up judicial nomination

Making its own apt contribution to celebrate Constitution Day, the UNC School of Law held a symposium Monday afternoon to explore the ins and outs of the Supreme Court nominating process.

Introducing the discussion panel, law professor Eric Muller joked that his original suggestion was for a debate about the constitutionality of requiring federally funded schools to celebrate Constitution Day.

Instead, it was an equally relevant topic that dominated the dialogue among the four panelists.

Confirmation hearings for Judge John Roberts, nominated to be the chief justice of the United States, concluded Thursday.

"I think Americans now realize the decisions of the court can indeed impact them and their values," said history professor John Semonche, noting the intense publicity surrounding contemporary Supreme Court nominees.

Semonche said the high-profile nature of the nomination process is a relatively recent phenomenon.

The first public hearing before the Senate judiciary committee was for Justice Harlan Stone, nominated by president Calvin Coolidge in 1925, with the first televised hearings held for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981.

"What the intense scrutiny has tended to produce is justices who are, in the final analysis, 'acceptable,'" Semonche said, referring to the tendency to shy away from potentially controversial nominees.

But Michael Gerhardt, a UNC law professor, noted a pattern that he said points to an increasingly politicized court.

"At one time we thought it was important to have political statesmen on the court," he said. "That's not what we've got in the last three chief justices."

Chief justices Warren Burger and William Rehnquist and nominee John Roberts all worked in middle-level positions at the U.S. Department of Justice, Gerhardt said, allowing them a place to thrive as ideologues rather than as statesmen.

"What we do not want on the Supreme Court are people prone to pragmatic thinking and people prone to compromise," he said.

"We are in an era when we believe, or at least our leaders believe, excelling at politics is not consistent with being a judge."

Still, Gerhardt said, it is important to keep some perspective when thinking about the present controversies that surround the Supreme Court. He noted that there always have been momentous issues settled before the high court.

"It has always been contentious. It has always been divisive," he said.

"Every era thinks it is worse than the one before."

 

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