When This Blows Over

I'm Jewish - I mean, I have no idea whether this does or does not influence the
way I think on property rights and so forth, and I think generally speaking, the
correct answer is “innocent until proven guilty”. So asking a question creates an
innuendo, but it's not the same thing as making an argument. I think it's a general
point to be taken into account in the abstract, but it's a little bit of, shall we say,
improper behavior when it's done in a direct confrontation in a hearing where it is
well known that Senator Feinstein opposes Judge Barrett for what she believes on
a wide range of issues, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with the
Roman Catholic faith.
Peter Robinson: A number of Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have
already declared they're going to vote against her. Why even hold the hearings?
Why shouldn't Mitch McConnell just move this straight to the floor and vote her
up or down?
Richard Epstein: Well, I have the following view about this … I think that no
nominee should ever be asked to go before a hearing…
PR: So you do oppose hearings in principle?
RE: No, not principle. I'm going to have people testify about her, but I don't want
to put her on the stand, because what they're going to do is play the same kind of
game: ‘Here's a sentence that you say - explain it away.’ Our friends could do that
quite well, and then what they're going to try to do is to get her to pre-commit on
future cases, which nobody ought to do. So the correct way to do this thing is to
have a battle about her, but not to put her in the middle of it, which was standard
practice, I believe I'm not mistaken, until Felix Frankfurter took to the floor in
order to explain himself [in 1938]. Louis Brandeis did not appear at his own
hearing… and by the way, [in a] controversial hearing where the Jewish issue was
very much on the mind of everybody. I think it took five days to complete. So I
think, in effect, that what happens is: you put the nominee up there, you're
guaranteeing a circus in the worst possible way it could go. I don't think this will
happen here.
John Yoo: I actually was really repulsed by Senator Feinstein's question -- and it's
not a question - she's making an accusation. I'm not Catholic, but I'm sitting there
thinking, ‘Well what's good enough for JFK is not good enough for ACB’ which is
this idea that if you're a Catholic, you'll be singled out and accused of allegedly
believing a certain set of things just because of your religion.