Our View: Senate hearings will show how best to vet judges

Before some of them had learned to pronounce her name, commentators left and right started pronouncing Sonia Sotomayor fit – or unfit – for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fortunately, a Senate confirmation process will provide a more thorough examination of her qualifications, so that when and if she takes her place as Justice David Souter’s replacement, Americans will have a reliable picture of who she is and what she stands for.

Experience warns us that the partisan push and pull will be messy. Admirers already are singing praise to her inspiring biography while detractors brandish snippets from speeches and summaries of selected opinions as incriminating truths, unburdened by context.

Tense as it may be, the confirmation tussle sheds valuable light on those in whom the Constitution entrusts such lofty judicial authority.

Senators, guided by their respective values and priorities, will scour the appointee’s record and confront her, some savagely and some fawningly, about her legal philosophy and her suitability for the high court.

In that high-visibility arena, they and the public will get more substantive answers than voters customarily receive from candidates in local judicial elections.

Back on Main Street, where trial court and even state appellate court races are decided at the polls, candidates are notoriously circumspect when asked to provide more than name, rank and serial number. Interpreting judicial conduct rules narrowly, they duck substantive questions about their beliefs and attitudes. They offer the biographical basics – schools attended, positions held, years of legal practice – but imply there is only one way to look at the law.

The reality, which will emerge sharply during the Supreme Court confirmation process ahead, is that individual judges’ personal beliefs do shape their interpretations of the law. That’s why members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will insist that Sotomayor provide frank answers to their questions.

For the most part, the senators will get meaningful information and will vote on the appointee’s confirmation accordingly.

Citizens who are charged with electing their local judges deserve the same courtesy. Unless judges and judicial candidates agree to be more forthcoming in their campaign comments, the citizens are going to be disappointed.