Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times

by Benjamin Wittes

Overview

Just in time for the first Supreme Court confirmation of the Obama administration, one of America's most insightful legal commentators updates the critically acclaimed Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times to place the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor in the context of the changing nature of judicial nominations by recent presidents.

Our system has gone from one in which people like Sotomayor or recent highly qualified nominees like John Roberts and Samuel Alito are shoe-ins for confirmation to a system in which they are shoe-ins for confirmation confrontations. While rejecting parodies offered by both the Right and Left of the decline of the process by which the United States Senate confirms—or rejects—the president's nominees to the federal judiciary, Wittes explains why and how this change took place. He argues that the trade has been a bad one—offering only the crudest check on executive appointments to the judiciary and putting nominees in the most untenable and unfair situations.

Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442201545
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	08/16/2009
Series:	Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society
Edition description:	Updated 2009
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, is author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror and Starr: A Reassessment. His writings have appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, and The Weekly Standard.

Table of Contents

Introduction     1
An Unsatisfying Debate     15
The Transformation of Judicial Confirmations     37
The Threat to Independent Courts     87
Conclusion: A Confirmation Process for Angry Times     111
Acknowledgments     133
Notes     137
Index     161

Editorial Reviews

This beautifully written and thought-provoking book is everything that the current confirmation process is not: temperate, thoughtful, nuanced, and fair. It is a 'must read' for anyone interested in the confirmation of federal judges.

John Maltese

Praise for the first edition: Benjamin Wittes, one of America's most insightful legal commentators, has achieved something remarkable: a book that casts genuinely fresh light on the question of judicial appointments. At a time when the debate about nominating and confirming judges tends to be shrill and partisan, this book is the opposite: scholarly, provocative, full of surprising history, and ultimately convincing. Both Wittes's analysis of the confirmation process and his proposed solutions will confound ideologues and delight open-minded readers of all political persuasions...

Jeffrey Rosen

[Wittes is] a highly cogent legal commentator.

The Washington Post

Wittes, a Washington Post editorial writer, thoughtfully and dispassionately looks at how the federal judicial confirmation process has deteriorated over time (and he persuasively argues that it has indeed deteriorated), and what can be done about it.

Eugene Volokh Eugene Volokh

Drawing upon his deep knowledge of Washington politics, Wittes proposes several structural solutions to confirmation partisanship, including abandoning nominee testimony and focusing Senators' attention on the nominee's record. Though some may find these suggestions radical, Wittes's practical, readable text represents a serious effort to cure a process that troubles many Americans.

Harvard Law Review

Witte's arguments and analyses are refreshing, especially his institutional perspective that sees the current confirmation process as the concomitant reaction to the overall institutional growth of the Judiciary over the last fifty years....Wittes's contribution to the study of the judicial selection process is an important one.

Book Notes APSA Legislative Studies Section Newsletter

This is the most interesting and fair-minded book ever written about the politics of judicial confirmation. The partisan participants in the judicial confirmation process should take Wittes's proposals for fixing the system very seriously, but for reasons he discouragingly explains, they probably won't.

Jack Goldsmith

...A terrific history of Supreme Court nominations.

New York Post - John R. Lott Jr.

Wittes is not pounding madly on the table—he is too thoughtful and careful with evidence for that—but he is alarmed that in these 'angry times,' the judicial confirmation process, disfigured by harsh partisanship, poses a short and longer term threat to judicial independence. ... [Confirmation Wars] is a fine treatment of judicial confirmation politics, at all points judicious in its treatment of the issues and informative in its coverage of the relevant history and scholarly debate.

Bob Bauer

Wittes, a Washington Post editorial writer, thoughtfully and dispassionately looks at how the federal judicial confirmation process has deteriorated over time (and he persuasively argues that it has indeed deteriorated), and what can be done about it.

Eugene Volokh

Witte's arguments and analyses are refreshing, especially his institutional perspective that sees the current confirmation process as the concomitant reaction to the overall institutional growth of the Judiciary over the last fifty years....Wittes's contribution to the study of the judicial selection process is an important one.

APSA Legislative Studies Section Newsletter

Drawing upon his deep knowledge of Washington politics, Wittes proposes several structural solutions to confirmation partisanship, including abandoning nominee testimony and focusing Senators' attention on the nominee's record. Though some may find these suggestions radical, Wittes's practical, readable text represents a serious effort to cure a process that troubles many Americans.

April 2007 Harvard Law Review

...A terrific history of Supreme Court nominations.
— John R. Lott Jr.

New York Post

Wittes's target in his short but acutely argued Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times is the Senate process that confronts federal judicial nominees, particularly prospective Supreme Court justices…Confirmation Wars offers no magic bullet, but it does underscore that Wittes's name is one you should remember.
—The Washington Post

David J. Garrow

[Wittes is] a highly cogent legal commentator.

The Review of Higher Education

...A terrific history of Supreme Court nominations.--John R. Lott Jr. "New York Post "

Benjamin Wittes, one of America's most insightful legal commentators, has achieved something remarkable: a book that casts genuinely fresh light on the question of judicial appointments. At a time when the debate about nominating and confirming judges tends to be shrill and partisan, this book is the opposite: scholarly, provocative, full of surprising history, and ultimately convincing. Both Wittes's analysis of the confirmation process and his proposed solutions will confound ideologues and delight open-minded readers of all political persuasions.--Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America

This is the most interesting and fair-minded book ever written about the politics of judicial confirmation. The partisan participants in the judicial confirmation process should take Wittes's proposals for fixing the system very seriously, but for reasons he discouragingly explains, they probably won't.--Jack Goldsmith, Harvard University

From the Publisher

[Wittes is] a highly cogent legal commentator.

Review Of Higher Education

[Wittes is] a highly cogent legal commentator.

Washington Post