Sixteen years ago a young scholar complained that the confirmation process for Supreme Court justices had taken on "an air of vacuity and farce". Senators failed to ask hard questions. Nominees refused to give substantive answers. Ruth Bader Ginsburg dodged every query as either "too specific" (meaning, roughly, anything that might have some bearing on a case that might some day come before the court) or "too general" (roughly, anything else worthy of mention). Let's bring back the kind of grilling to which Judge Robert Bork was subjected in 1987, wrote Elena Kagan. She must be kicking herself.
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