I took Howard Gillman's question to be whether there is any constitutional problem with a justice saying one thing in his confirmation hearings, and then taking a different position on the Court. The answer to that question, in my mind, is simply no. (I guess there might conceivably be a perjury issue, but that would not rise to constitutional magnitude). Obviously, other people on the list have a different view about what is interesting.
In any event, I owe Howard Gillman an apology. I greatly respect his scholarship, and my answer was disrespectful.
At 05:57 PM 6/26/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Please explain. Are there no implications, or are those implications not interesting, or not constitutionally interesting? Is it that one can never eliminate the possibility of good faith evolving jurisprudence, no matter how stark a contradiction, so one can never have a sufficient belief that a judicial nominee lied under oath to warrant impeachment? (That seems to be true of Thomas in this circumstance, but is it necessarily always true?) Or is it that lying under oath -- or making misleading statements that are arguably not technically lies -- is not an impeachable offense, except under particularly serious circumstances? (It seems to me a lot of people were interested in similar questions within the past few years.) And can it really be that lying to the Senate under oath during the process of confirmation as to how one will perform one's job is so obviously not impeachment-worthy that there are no interesting constitutional implications?
-- Jon
Jon Romberg Seton Hall Law School
Earl Maltz wrote: No.
At 12:28 PM 6/26/2003 -0700, howard gillman wrote:
Are there any interesting constitutional implications associated with judicial nominees who say one thing during confirmation hearings and something else once they are on the bench?
>Howard Gillman >USC Political Science
