Joseph Farah has three questions for judicial nominees:
- Do you believe the original intent of the founders should be considered when weighing the constitutionality of a law?
- Do you believe the Constitution is a “living document,” whose actual meaning changes with the times?
- From where do people get their rights?
I agree with the premise. And the reason. Hearings on nominees have become nothing but political theater. All that Senators need to know about a nominee is in the public record. A simple yes or no to the first two questions and a simple response to the third should end all questioning.
Americans don’t need black-robed justices divining the meaning of the Constitution. The Constitution was written by our Founding Fathers as a document that could be understood by ordinary citizens without law degrees from Harvard or Yale – or even in spite of such credentials.
Which is why I support the idea of someone like Andrew Napolitano or Newt Gingrich as a justice. Knowledge of the Constitution and the history that created it is far more important than years on an appellate court reading depositions.
I like your three questions, and I agree that knowledge of the history of the Constitution should be a prerequisite to be a Supreme Court Justice.
That being said, Supreme Court Justices are often called upon to analyze much more mundane matters than Constitutional issues. For instance, the intricacies of the Internal Revenue Code, copyrights, patent issues, admiralty cases, and the myriad of disputes that arise under the huge body of federal law. Now, the Constitution doesn’t require Supreme Court Justices to be lawyers, but if you’re interpreting some obscure provision of the Bankruptcy Code, it certainly helps.
Comment by John Adams at The Commons — March 1, 2005 @ 4:43 pm
I agree there are other issues, but they hire clerks for that kind of research, anyway.
Comment by Bunker — March 1, 2005 @ 5:00 pm