Note On The Upcoming SCOTUS Confirmation Hearings For Trump’s Second Pick

7/7/18

The estimable Amy Wax, former Harvard Medical School grad, then Columbia law grad, now tenured law prof at U Penn, an ivy—wow, thems are some rootin’ tootin’ credentials—once spoke about who gets to clerk for SC judges, how they’re at the top .0X% of the top 1% of who’s IQ and analytically smart in America and how that sheer brain power in their cases is married to sheer disciplined, hard work in mastering the demanding the complexities of law at the highest levels. 

So the ones of these who in the modern era become SCOTUS judges or nominated to be one—Harriet Miers an exception proving the rule—almost always have that awesome brain power, prodigious work ethic and, in most cases, great political and personal skills, and are inestimable in action in their realms, one being answering Senators’ questions in confirmation hearings.

They simply, usually, dominate the room, with their brilliance. Of late, Gorsuch, Roberts and Kagan come particularly to mind. It’s atypical, though it happens, when a Senator can actually engage one of them in an exchange of near equals. 

Typically the nominees run rings around the Senators, and not occasionally unintentionally make the Senators look hapless.

Come the upcoming confirmation hearings, what with what’s at stake, what with D hysteria and what with them as unfettered, shrill Kabuki political theater, they have to be the greatest show on earth.

I’ll watch them gavel to gavel, stem to stern, from the first minute to the last. 

I wouldn’t miss them for the world. 

I’ll be fascinated.