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A View from the Legislature |
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Tuesday, 28 August 2007 |
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An Interview with Senator Arlen Specter
Conducted by Avi Kupfer In a report to Congress earlier this year, Chief Justice Roberts argued that judicial pay is too low and that judges are in need of a raise. How would you assess the current state of judicial pay?
Judges’ salaries have not kept pace with increases in the cost of living and certainly not with the pace of increases in what deans of law schools earn. I believe that it’s important to reassess the current pay scales and to give the judges a pay raise. I made a statement on this that was in the Congressional Record. It gives my views on the judicial pay raises in some detail.
Earlier this fall you supported a detainee bill backed by President Bush despite initially stating that the bill was “patently unconstitutional on its face.” You ultimately agreed to the bill because you believed “the court will clean it up.” To what extent is it the responsibility of courts to pick through potentially unconstitutional legislation, and is there a more feasible alternative to this process?
It was a tough decision for me to vote on the final passage of the bill, and I decided to do so because it contained some important provisions. The legislation recognized the applicability of the Geneva Conventions. It also provided for confrontation of witnesses, limited interrogation practices, and the bill was severable. It was my thought that the courts would declare this one provision unconstitutional. I still think that they will.
In a speech during the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings you noted that the Judiciary Committee voted along party lines, ten Republicans for and eight Democrats against confirmation. You went on to argue that the Senate “would benefit greatly [from] more independence. How would this potential independence affect the confirmation process, and is it a viable possibility in the foreseeable future?
When I talk about my independence, I mean that I backed certain judges when I thought they were qualified. The Republican Party line during the Clinton Administration was, in the later stages, to not give his nominees hearings and not bring the nominations to the floor. When I became chairman, I worked to develop relationships with Democrats, with Senators Kennedy and Biden, and I was able to get a more cooperative Judiciary Committee than I think my predecessor had.
Over the years you have introduced legislation to make the courts “more accessible,” including a bill to televise Supreme Court proceedings. Yet the judiciary is often portrayed as the distant, aloof branch of government. How can the Court become more accessible to citizens who are affected by its decisions, and why is this openness so important?
It is important because the public doesn’t understand what the Court does, and the judiciary is the most powerful branch of government. They have the final say, and they decide the answers to all of the cutting-edge questions. If you take a look at my statement introducing legislation for television cameras, I go into detail on how the Court decides all of the big questions, even who lives and who dies. I think that people ought to understand what the Court is doing, and if their proceedings were televised, it would promote a lot more public understanding.
Especially in recent years, a nominee’s position on the decision in Roe v. Wade has been a major point of discussion in confirmation hearings. Should a single issue play such a dominant role in this important process?
I do not think that this issue dominates all of the other issues. We take up many other issues in the confirmation process, such as the power of Congress, affirmative action, civil rights, and substantive law issues of many sorts. The woman’s right to choose has become a very big matter, and it’s a key factor in presidential campaigns. I think that it’s natural in terms of its importance in everyday life. It’s important to many people that we give it prominence. It is true that I led my questioning of both Alito and John Roberts with questions to get deeply into that subject because it is important, but if you take a look at the record, there are plenty of other subjects that we consider as well.
You have called the handling of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination a “black mark” on the process. Over your years serving on and heading the Judiciary Committee, how have you seen the nomination and confirmation process change?
We’re now asking many more questions than we did in the past. I think the Robert Bork confirmation process was a watershed. Bork had written extensively, and he knew that he would have to be able to explain his writings. He was in favor of original intent, and I questioned him at length in a session that lasted an hour and a half on a Saturday morning, September 19, 1987. Before Bork, Antonin Scalia was confirmed even after refusing to answer virtually any questions at all. I joked that he wouldn’t even give his name, rank, and serial number, but that he would only give his name and rank. Since Bork, the questioning has been more extensive. Of course, Clarence Thomas’ confirmation was an unusual matter, but there was more extensive questioning of David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Stephen Breyer. There’s more of a line of inquiry now than there had been in earlier confirmation proceedings. But bear in mind that it wasn’t until 1955 that it was regular practice to have confirmation hearings. They had some special circumstances where issues had arisen in individual cases, but the practice did not begin until fairly recently.
For the full text of the two statements Senator Specter delivered on the Senate floor referred to in this interview on judicial pay (March 29, 2007) and cameras in the courtroom (January 29, 2007) please visit our website at www.yale.edu/thepolitic/specter.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 29 August 2007 )
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