Topic: Long-Term Effects on Quality of Candidates for the Supreme Court
Senator: Graham
Date: SEPTEMBER 13, 2005
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GRAHAM: Let's not talk about you now, but I would like you to comment, give us some advice here. We're always trying to advise the president through you.
What's the long-term effect on the quality of candidates that we'll be able to recruit for jobs like the Supreme Court if the current process continues and grows over time?
ROBERTS: I think it is a very serious threat to the independence and integrity of the courts to politicize them. I think that is not a good development, to regard the courts as simply an extension of the political process. That's not what they are.
I have been fortunate for the past two years to serve on a court in which all of the judges -- and they come, the D.C. Circuit, they come from very active careers in public life and sometimes very identified politically -- but it's a court where those judges put aside those ties and those views and become judges all focused on the same mission of vindicating the rule of law.
And if you look at the decisions on the D.C. Circuit, you'll see that we are almost always unanimous, we almost always come out the same way. And to the extent there are disagreements, they don't shape up along political lines.
That is an ideal. But the more and more that the process becomes politicized, the less likely that that's going to happen.
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