Confirmation Hearings Quotes

The Supreme Court is our ultimate check and balance.

Judge Samuel Alito, millions of Americans are concerned about your nomination. They're worried that you would be a judicial activist who would restrict our rights and freedoms.

The court that serves America should reflect America.

You'd make a great Secretary of State because State Department personnel don't answer questions completely either.

Leftist law breaking, rule breaking, violence, and disruption have already marred the public Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

This administration seems intent on accumulating unchecked power.

The Senate should refuse to confirm nominees who do not take Congressional power seriously.

Children learn a lot from what their parents say. But they learn a lot more from what their parents do.

The president has the right to select who he wants for the Supreme Court. He doesn't have to get it cleared from Congress, Senate or anybody... No president before this has come under this kind of scrutiny ... before the committee hearings even begin.

If I were the president, I would be very concerned... and I would do what was reasonably necessary to find a way to get my people confirmed.

You never know what’s going to happen at a confirmation hearing.

When Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was before us in 1993, she said that her standard was to give no hints, no forecasts, no previews, and declined to answer dozens of questions.

Rudy Giuliani would bring conflicts of interest into any Senate confirmation hearing that would be impossible to clear if confirmation hearings operate under the same gravitational forces that they used to in the pre-Trump era.

What I meant when I say that the media are bots, I don't want anybody misunderstand this. I'm watching CNN and one of their infobabes is doing this report on Al Franken questioning [Jeff] Sessions during the confirmation hearings. I'm convinced - and they played an edited version of it. It was edited by somebody to make it look like it was something other than what it was, and I'm convinced this infobabe hasn't the slightest clue.

[Discussing the confirmation process:] A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.

For a long time in American history, people didn't even come up before the Senate. They didn't come before the Judiciary Committee, and up until about 1923, something like that.

If you think about the way the hearings were structured, the hearings were really about Thomas' race and my gender.

This is beginning to sound more like a canonization hearing than a confirmation hearing.

[Donald Trump] said that he would likely have a decision and an announcement by the end of January [2017] and that'll obviously take a great deal of energy. It's enormously important in the life of the Court and the life of the nation.

The question for the Republicans running the confirmation hearings in the United States Senate is whose rules are they going to use?

For roughly two hundred years, politics has influenced dramatically the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices. Presidents routinely have selected nominees to the Court based on political considerations…

While Roberts wanted to give the impression he respected the right to privacy and the precedent of Roe vs. Wade, his answers look dangerously similar to the responses (Associate Justice) Clarence Thomas gave senators during his confirmation hearings 14 years ago.

The most important rule for a nominee in a confirmation hearing is the 80/20 rule. If they are talking 80% of the time and you are talking 20%, you’re winning. If its 60/40, it means you are arguing. If it is 50/50, it means you have lost and you’d better throw in the towel.

I had 24 hours to prepare. If this were a criminal case 5 or 6 lawyers would have weeks to prepare.