Legal Commentary

Leave it to Jack Balkin to find some legitimate benefit in the silly showmanship of the confirmation hearings. They are, he argues, not about the nominee, but about the Senators and their efforts to articulate a popular constitutional vision and a sense of what all "reasonable" or "mainstream" judges should believe and to signal that to the judiciary as a whole.

And in truth we have heard some of that (ironically, from a Democrat, I believ Sen. Schumer)--government should win most of the time in criminal cases, government should win most of the time in immigration cases, and most race-discrimination claims should be rejected.