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What is the purpose of senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees?

Curious
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    Some prior reseach please, or you will get a pointless answer "The purpose of Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees is to hear from and decide on the confirmation of nominees to the Supreme Court." – James K Oct 18 '20 at 07:17
  • The dirty secret of the Supreme Court is that is has no actual power: No army or budget to enforce it's rulings. - That's why historically they were called: "the least dangerous branch of government" - The only actual power it has is to publish pdfs on it's website and hope other agencies listen to them. Hence: A show of theatrics is put on for each nominee in order to lend legitimacy. – SurpriseDog Oct 18 '20 at 13:35

2 Answers2

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It's constitutionally required (sort of)

The constitution says that the President gets to nominate people to SCOTUS positions, and they are then appointed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate. The consent part means the Senate has to vote on the nominee. How the Senate does the process is up to the Senate to decide, as per the constitution it is the creator and adjudicator of its own rules.

This nominate and consent structure was chosen by the writers of the constitution as an attempt to balance the good parts and bad parts of just the President, or just the Senate (or Congress) doing both themselves. The Senate's role in this case is to basically act as peer pressure on the President: he has to put his choice up for the scrutiny of another branch of government, which makes it difficult to hide corrupt, poorly considered, or inept selections. So their essential role is to ascertain the basic suitability and qualifications of the nominee, and to serve as a stopgap on corruption.

But there are no real constitutional requirements on such a nominee. And as the Senate gets to decide the rules of its own proceedings, the decision to "consent" or not can be made on essentially completely arbitrary grounds, with an equally arbitrary process. This is what I mean by "sort of": the (advice and) consent is required by the constitution, but the particular form of that undertaking is a choice made by the Senate which they can change at will.

Ultimately the Senate has decided that all nominees will first be run through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is typically filled with Senators with legal degrees and backgrounds. In theory at least, these committee members are the Senators considered best-suited and trusted to evaluate a nominee, both with regards to present-day concerns and issues of the judiciary as well as general acumen and subject qualifications.

These are the hearings that are going on now. They were also the hearings you likely heard about for Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Only if this Committee approves of the nominee, by a majority vote in favor, can it then be brought to the full Senate for the actual "consent" vote required by the Constitution. It is rare for the Committee to approve a nominee, but for the consent vote in the full Senate to then fail, but it does happen.

zibadawa timmy
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  • Re it's constitutionally required (sort of). Not just "sort of". It's constitutionally required, end of sentence. – David Hammen Oct 18 '20 at 08:12
  • @DavidHammen The advice and consent is required, but the form and nature of those things has no requirements. The Judiciary Committee is not required, nor are its hearings. They could have picked some other way to do it, and they still could. – zibadawa timmy Oct 18 '20 at 08:18
  • The real shame is that good answers like this will never be seen unless the question gets reopened. – SurpriseDog Oct 18 '20 at 13:31
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The US Constitution says that the President

shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Ambassadors and most executive branch appointees are expected to submit their resignations on the day a new President is elected. This is not the case with judges, whose appointments are for life. The Senate has rejected about a quarter of nominees to the Supreme Court.

Unofficially (i.e., not counted in the 25%), most of the rejections occur prior to nomination. The President is informed that a potential nominee will almost certainly result in rejection (and embarrassment). Most of the official rejections occur before hearings even start. The President ignores advice but then withdraws the nomination after being told that the nomination will fail. Others have been rejected in committee hearings, and finally, a few have been rejected in the vote before the Senate floor.

The Supreme Court has on rare occasions made phenomenally bad decisions such as the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 that made "separate but equal" treatment of Black Americans legal. States deemed overcrowded back seats of buses to be "equal" to the empty front seats, and much worse. Those phenomenally bad decisions can have very long lasting impacts because of the way (stare decisis) in which American jurisprudence works. The "separate but equal" concept that was deemed to be legal by Plessy v. Ferguson lasted for almost sixty years until overturned by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

These long-lasting impacts of lifetime appointees to any federal court, and especially to the Supreme Court, is why US Senators almost unanimously view approving or rejecting nominees to federal court positions as one of their most important jobs.

David Hammen
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