WHAT ABOUT POLITICAL SCIENTISTS?

Senator Cornyn wants to reform the judicial nominations process (as reported at How Appealing). So why does he only invite Senators and law professors to testify at his first hearing? How about political scientists who have actually studied the nominations process in detail (that's not me, by the way)? Sheldon Goldman, for example? What makes law professors like Doug Kmiec experts on the nominations process in particular? What's needed, it seems to me, is testimony that looks at the nominations process from the widest possible perspective. That perspective is not identical to the perspective of professionals in the legal culture itself.

Oh well.

MORE: Let me second Rick Hasen's call for testimony from Lawrence Solum of the indomitable Legal Theory blog. . .and not just because I share Hasen's fears about the political leanings of the folks Cornyn has collected. Doug Kmiec, for example, is a very smart and articulate man, but my impression is that calling him to testify at a hearing on judicial nominations will stretch even his expertise to the breaking point.

MORE: Read John Ferejohn's short essay on the judicialization of politics here (link via Legal Theory). This is the kind of approach that one might get from political scientists but not necessarily from legal scholars. Ferejohn canvasses briefly the worldwide, post-WWII phenomenon of the rise of judicial power and provides a few broad explanations for the phenomenon. One of the reasons Cornyn might not want to invite political scientists to the party, however, is reflected in Ferejohn's advice in the article: look to European practices of supermajority requirements and term limits. These are the kinds of reforms advocated by Bruce Ackerman as well, as I noted a while back (a law professor, to be sure, but one who likes to hang out at selected political science events). These kinds of reforms really strike me as quite sensible, but the immediate partisan gain for such reforms would accrue primarily to the Democrats, who have already enacted, unilaterally, a supermajority requirement of sorts.