Publication date:
16 August 2009Length of book:
182 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442201545
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
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
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...