Six senators on the Judiciary Committee don't have law degrees. How did they prepare for the hearing?
A law degree wasn't a requirement last week to participate in the biggest legal spectacle in the nation — even for those asking the questions.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee includes members who, in their professional careers, have been a medical doctor, a satirist and the owner of the National Basketball Association's Milwaukee Bucks. These senators haven't sat through 1L classes, let alone had the extensive academic training or practical legal experience of some of their colleagues.
So how did they prepare to take on the responsibility of questioning U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor? And of grilling her on complex questions of constitutional theory and statutory interpretation? By reading, they said, and by spending a lot of time with lawyers they have on staff.
"Where we come up short is the language of lawyers," said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a farmer by profession who's been in Congress since 1975. "That's our shortcoming. So, I think that what we have to do is spend more time with our LAs, legislative assistants, to ask more questions — probably very simple questions — but we've got to understand the language of lawyers, and we've got to study the cases to a greater extent maybe than the average lawyer."
Grassley, who asked Sotomayor about property rights and same-sex marriage, said he took classes in administrative and constitutional law when he was a student of political science in the 1950s. "So we're not totally ignorant about the major cases of law and the major precedents," he said. To get ready for last week, he said, he read summaries, prepared by staff, of some of Sotomayor's cases from her 17 years as a district and appellate judge, as well as legal commentary that he came across in newspapers.
In all, six of the committee's 19 members are nonlawyers, including two of its senior members, Grassley and Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.). That ratio — of almost one in three — is significantly higher than it's been in other recent confirmation battles. About one in five members did not have a law degree during the hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., Justice Samuel Alito Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas and failed nominee Robert Bork.
One of the six nonlawyers on the current panel, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), has the advantage of having spent three decades working for then-Sen. Joe Biden, a key figure in a generation of Supreme Court confirmation battles. Kaufman, who used to help Biden write questions, pressed Sotomayor about a string of cases related to antitrust law and other business issues.
The committee members who are lawyers have been state attorneys general, U.S. attorneys and state prosecutors. One was a state supreme court justice, and at least three of the lawyer-senators have argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kohl, the Bucks owner and a retail magnate, prepared for Sotomayor's hearing in part by convening a group of Wisconsin legal experts at Marquette University Law School. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said in his opening statement that he's been "consulting with some of Minnesota's top legal minds" after spending the past three decades as an author, radio personality, and writer and performer for "Saturday Night Live."
Read on.
We will soon know how much the Senators prepared for Sotomayor's hearing in the Senate vote for her confirmation for Supreme Court judge.
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