Political Quotes

“as a Member of the U.S. Senate, my role in providing advice and consent to the President on his or her nominations to the Supreme Court is among our most important constitutional duties. In fulfilling that duty, I have a pretty clear criteria on how I go about making these decisions. The first is whether the nominee has the character to serve on the Supreme Court; the second is whether the nominee has the intellect and the experience and the academic credentials to serve on a Court that hears complex and difficult questions of law; and the third is does the nominee believe in the proper role of the Supreme Court, which, in my opinion, is to interpret and to apply the Constitution, not to change or manipulate it to reach a certain policy goal. There is broad bipartisan support for the first two parts of my criteria. We can all agree that people who serve on the Court should have the character to do so. We can all agree our nominees and those who serve on the Court have to have the intellect and the experience and the academic credentials to be on the Court. Much of our fights around here center around the third part of my criteria. In fact, it goes to the heart of most of the nomination fights we have. There are some who would like the Supreme Court to become a policymaking branch, a place that makes policy and makes laws, but I believe the job of an appellate court is to decide whether a policy decision of the political branches is constitutional.…”