Alito bit of this, Alito bit of that

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I haven't had the time to comment on the Samuel Alito nomination; I've been too busy with a paper submission and an upcoming fellowship application. Man does not live by blog alone. So I thought I'd refer y'all to Cass Sunstein, from the University of Chicago Law School, who's discussed the matter at some length in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post and an interview in NPR's Fresh Air.

Harriet Miers I opposed because she wasn't up to the level of achivement that we've come to expect from Supreme Court nominees. That level, of course, is a different thing from constitutional qualification (the Constitution doesn't even require the Justices to be attorneys fergodsake!), but is an important criterion nonetheless. Sam Alito is obviously qualified, but I still think that he should be opposed. It's perfectly legitimate for the Senate to consider the ideological makeup of the Court, if we think that the USSC's decisions should reflect the nation's understanding of its own foundational charter. And given that the mechanism for deliberation on that self-understanding is the two-party system, the Democrats have every right (duty, indeed) to raise the issue of his conservatism and vote accordingly. As do the Republicans.

And that's where the filibuster comes in. By effectively requiring a supermajority, the filibuster is a deliberative tool that forces the nomination of consensus candidates, which are precisely the ones that will probably reflect the national political landscape the best.