Committee will clash over new justice

WASHINGTON – When a Supreme Court vacancy occurs – and there is rampant speculation that one is about to – the job of scrutinizing President Bush’s nominee will fall to what many experts consider the Senate’s most polarized committee.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has long attracted lawmakers on each extreme of the ideological spectrum because it handles so many hot-button legal and social issues, from judicial nominees to gun rights to same-sex marriage.

“Shrinking violets, when it comes to the tough issues that define the parties, tend to stay off the Judiciary Committee,” said Manus Cooney, a former committee Republican staff director who is now a Washington lobbyist. “It has jurisdiction over a lot of issues that divide conservatives and liberals. So you tend to draw people with fairly firm convictions.”

Current members include such well-known senators as Democrats Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Charles Schumer of New York and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah. There are lawmakers with fervent positions on controversial issues – Democrat Russell Feingold of Wisconsin for protecting civil liberties, and Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas for opposing abortion and activism in other conservative social causes.

The polarization of the committee will complicate matters for Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a moderate who took over as the panel’s chairman this year. But some observers said Specter’s record of independence and his relationship with Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel’s top Democrat, could reduce friction.

“Specter and Leahy get along well,” said Beryl Howell, former Democratic general counsel to the committee and now a Washington attorney in private practice. “They both share the same view of the important role of the Judiciary Committee to do its job in considering Supreme Court nominees.”

Specter came under heavy attack from conservatives in late 2004 after he suggested Bush should not insist on nominating judges who favor ending abortion rights. But he also attracted national attention in 1991 for his aggressive questioning of law professor Anita Hill during confirmation hearings for conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Specter told reporters in February the committee was “doing as much spade work as we can in advance” to prepare for a Supreme Court opening.

“You need to bring the country together on this nomination if you possibly can,” he said. “The president has his prerogative, and you have certain segments of the Republican Party having been instrumental in his victory and having a claim to a voice, and he has to balance all those factors.

“But taking advice (from senators) is not too hard as long as you get to make the final decision.”

Specter’s handling of the public confirmation hearings on the nominee will be especially important, several observers said.

“If it’s a very conservative nominee on a variety of social and economic issues, then the hearings could be important to the Democrats as they seek to crystallize public opinion and seek a rationale for filibustering,” said Steven Smith, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Cooney, the former Republican staffer, said Specter’s challenge will be to keep Democrats from defining the scope of the hearings.

Interest groups opposing Bush’s nominee “will want to portray this – and have the public perceive this – as a trial where the nominee has the burden of proving that he or she meets their definition of what qualifies for confirmation,” Cooney said. “That’s just simply not the case.”

Several committee members could play important roles.

Republicans Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were members of a bipartisan group of 14 senators that recently struck a deal involving Bush’s nominations for appellate court vacancies, averting an expected showdown on the Senate floor.

Graham could play a part “in trying to persuade Bush to seek advice from Democrats and to nominate an acceptable conservative,” said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Of the committee’s 10 Republicans, seven – including Graham – have never voted on a Supreme Court nomination. Two of the committee’s eight Democrats have joined the Senate since the last nominee, Stephen G. Breyer, was confirmed in 1994.