Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times

Wittes, Benjamin

ISBN 10: 074255144X / ISBN 13: 9780742551442

Published by Rowman & Littlefield Pub, Lanham, MD, 2006

About this Item

168, notes, index, slight wear to DJ edges. Inscribed by the author. The author is an editorial writer for the Washington Post. He examines the degradation of the judicial nominations process over the past 50 years, drawing on years of reporting on judicial nominations, including numerous interviews with nominees and sitting judges. He urges basic reforms to better insulate the judiciary from the nastiness of contemporary politics.

Seller Inventory # 50984

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Pub, Lanham, MD
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 074255144X
• ISBN 13: 9780742551442
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition. First Printing.
• Condition: very good, very good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Supreme Court

About this title

Synopsis

In Confirmation Wars, Benjamin Wittes rejects the 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. He draws on original reporting and new historical research to provide a more accurate understanding of the current climate. He argues that the transformations the process has undergone should not be understood principally in partisan terms but as an institutional response on the part of the legislative branch to the growth of judicial power in the past five decades. While some change may have been inevitable, the increasing aggressiveness of the Senate's conception of its function poses significant challenges for maintaining independent courts over the long term. The problem, Wittes argues, lies both in the extortionate quality of modern confirmations, in which senators make their votes contingent on reassurance by the nominees about substantive areas of concern, and in the possibility that the breakdown of the confirmation process represents a far larger effort by the Senate to rein in judicial power. Wittes offers several strategies for managing the political conflict surrounding nominations, strategies that seek to protect the independence of the courts and the prerogative of the president to choose judges while maximizing the utility to democratic government of a Senate that takes its advice and consent role seriously. Most importantly, Wittes argues for ending the relatively new practice of having nominees testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution.

About the Author

Benjamin Wittes is the editor in chief of Lawfare. He is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Law and the Long War and The Future of Violence, among other books.