JURIST Supported by the University of Pittsburgh   Hollow
Ritual: The Alito Confirmation Hearings  JURIST Guest Columnist
Peter Shane of Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University,
says that the confirmation hearings for US Supreme Court nominee
Judge Samuel Alito were a distressingly hollow ritual that
reflected poorly on the nominee, the Senators questioning him,
and the current state of the confirmation process...  To start
candidly, I was opposed before the Alito hearings to the
confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to be Associate Justice of
the Supreme Court, and I still am. One would expect, given the
apparent inevitability of his confirmation, that those
dissatisfied with the hearings would come disproportionately
from the anti-Alito camp. But my reasons for dissatisfaction are
only tangentially related to outcome, and I suspect many pro-
Alito observers would share at least some of my qualms about the
ritual we have just endured. The easiest way of putting my
reservations is that the hearings struck me