Volume 42, Number 2 · February 2, 1995
Thomas's Confirmation: The True Story
By Garry Wills
The Confirmation Mess: Cleaning Up the Federal Appointments Process
by Stephen L. Carter
Basic Books, 252 pp., $21.00
Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality
edited and with an introduction by Toni Morrison
Pantheon, 475 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas
by John C. Danforth
Viking, 225 pp., $19.95
Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas
by Jane Mayer, by Jill Abramson
Houghton Mifflin, 406 pp., $24.95
After Supreme Court nominations led to two recent slug-fests (Robert Bork's rejection in 1987, Clarence Thomas's confirmation in 1991), many people believed that 'the process' of clearing appointments to the Court had gone seriously awry and needed repair. Senator John Danforth wants confirmation hearings to be treated like trials, preserving the assumption that a nominee is innocent of all charges brought against him or her, until and unless such charges can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Others have proposed different remedies—that trained cross-examiners, instead of senators on the judiciary committee, question the nominee; that the hearings be held in secret (or not held at all), that witnesses against the nominee be restricted in what they can allege. Stephen Carter, in The Confirmation Mess, shows how unpracticable these and other remedies would be.
Review, 9224 words
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