Senate Set to Give Advice, Consent on O’Connor

WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate is cranking up its advice and consent machine again as the Judiciary Committee prepares to consider the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. The outcome, as usual, is pretty well assured. Mrs. O’Connor is expected to be asked more than the usual number of questions. But in the end, she is expected to be recommended for confirmation and confirmed by the full Senate. The process has been the subject of debate ever since the Constitutional Convention of 1778. [sic] It was denounced as a ”rubberstamp” as recently as 1977. But it survives with little change. Article II of the Constitution gives the president the power to appoint the principal officers of the federal government “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” The provision itself was a compromise. Some delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted to give the Senate the power to make the appointments. Others wanted the president to have it. The result left the standards for confirmation vague, as they remain today. Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist that, “If an ill appointment should be made, the executive for nominating, and the Senate, for approving, would participate, though in different degrees, in the opprobrium and disgrace.” According to a study by Common Cause, a group which monitors the government on behalf of what it considers the public interest, the Senate received 133,302 nominations during the 94th Congress. . The nominees all are not as controvers