A frustrated Sen. Joe Biden called for just doing away with judicial nomination hearings, since little is learned from them.
Supreme Court nominees are so mum about the major legal issues at their Senate confirmation hearings that the hearings serve little purpose and should probably be abandoned, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden said Thursday.
“The system’s kind of broken,” said Biden, a member of the Judiciary Committee considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito.
“Nominees now, Democrat and Republican nominees, come before the United States Congress and resolve not to let the people know what they think about the important issues,” such as a president’s authority to go to war, said Biden.
As the committee headed into its fourth day of hearings on the Alito nomination, Biden told NBC’s “Today” show that a better solution might be to skip hearings and send nominations straight to the Senate floor for a vote.
“Just go to the Senate floor and debate the nominee’s statements,” the Delaware senator said, “instead of this game.”
That was once standard practice. Until 1925, Supreme Court nominees were not expected to testify before a committee, and their nominations were sent straight to the floor, according to the Senate Historical Office.
This was presumably tongue-in-cheek but it’s a great idea.
Another possibility would be to have senators actually ask questions rather than using the hearings as a platform for grandstanding. That, however, is unlikely.
