Chuck Schumer: “If I might answer, I think my colleague has hit the nail on the head. This is so important. What we have come to is the…”

“If I might answer, I think my colleague has hit the nail on the head. This is so important. What we have come to is the fact that nominees are often told not to answer questions. There is an article in the Legal Times where one of the leading conservative judges of the court of appeals instructed nominees not to answer questions. Why would someone say, do not answer questions; fudge on the questions? I think I know why, as we talked about before. Because if they gave their honest answers, they would become so controversial that many of them would not pass. But imagine the alternative: Not asking the question, or not getting the question answered, and then this nominee who has views way beyond the mainstream gets on the court and starts doing things. Do you know what would happen? Our constituents would come to us and say: Do something. We would try, but it would be very difficult. We would probably have people on the other side saying: Well, I didn't know he thought like that. Yet when we have the opportunity to ask that nominee questions, to try and get some idea of how he thinks, we are denied the answers-- either because we did not have time, as in the case of the three nominees, or in the case of not allowing discussion to go on in the Judiciary Committee, or because we had the time--with Miguel Estrada we had plenty of time, but the nominee refused to answer the questions, simply saying: I will follow the law. We have been through that.…”