Public Testimony by Court Choices Assailed

WASHINGTON — The Senate should stop requiring Supreme Court nominees to testify in public because the confirmation hearings can “completely distort” the candidates’ qualifications, a panel of lawyers recommended Tuesday.

“The confirmation process has become dangerously close to looking like the electoral process,” the Task Force on Judicial Selection, a privately financed committee chaired by former New York Gov. Hugh L. Carey, concluded in a report.

Carey said at a news conference that the “relentless media spectacle of Senate hearings” was undermining judicial independence by turning the confirmation proceedings “into a public referendum.”

The committee did not rule out informal interviews with nominees so that senators could assess their judicial temperament and legal qualifications. But it said Supreme Court nominees “should no longer be expected to appear as witnesses during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on their confirmation.”