MOSAIC MAGAZINE
What the First Senate Hearing for a Supreme Court Nominee Shows about Today’s Confirmation Process
by Rick Richman
October 6, 2020

Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination, and the possibility of another contentious Senate confirmation hearing, evoke the first time the Senate ever held such a hearing, a little over a century ago—when President Woodrow Wilson nominated, in the same election year in which he was running for a second term, a jurist who belonged to one of America’s religious minorities, and whose views were thought incompatible with the conventional opinions shared by the Washington establishment. That nominee would go on to become the first Jewish justice to sit on the Supreme Court. For the first 142 years of our history, there were no hearings on Supreme Court nominations. Presidents simply sent their names to the Senate, which considered the nominations privately and then voted on them. READ MORE (THERE IS A FREE INITAL SIGNUP TO VIEW IF ARTICLE DOESN’T DISPLAY)