Hearing on Judge Rogers was embarrassing charade

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In the first place, Rogers contradicted her pose several times. She chose to answer questions about some cases and issues - like the New London eminent domain case, which went to the Connecticut and U.S. supreme courts - though even settled issues like that one might reach the appellate courts again.

Second, this construction of ethics presumes that judicial nominees must have no opinions on the law until they are safely installed in office. This is nonsense, too. For nearly all judicial nominees have records as judges or lawyers and these records prove that they have opinions, without any legislative inquiry. To suggest otherwise is to risk becoming as ridiculous as U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas did when he told the Senate that he had no opinion on the legality of abortion - which would have made him the only such adult in the country.

Of course many judges are appointed precisely because they have opinions on legal controversies and are expected to help settle them in the way favored by the appointing authorities, the executive and the legislative branches of government. And why not? It is not as if these issues involve findings of fact or the credibility of witnesses, not as if they require any impartiality at all. To the contrary, by the time they reach an appellate court, these issues are entirely matters of choosing among legal theories and political beliefs.

The nomination of a liberal judge or a conservative judge, a judge who sees abortion rights in the Constitution or a judge who does not, a judge who thinks the commerce clause gives government the power to do anything to anyone who has a dime in his pocket or a judge who thinks the commerce clause requires government to get closer to a state line before ordering someone around - these are entirely political issues. To exempt a judicial nominee from talking about them is only to remove democracy from politics and turn a powerful branch of government into a secretive insider’s game.

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The Judiciary Committee's deference to Rogers amid her refusal to discuss whatever was inconvenient to her became obsequious. The committee's Senate chairman, Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, even invited her not to answer certain questions, as if he was working for the judiciary. This might have embarrassed any committee member more loyal to his own branch of government than to the judiciary, in which half the committee's members hold dual office as commissioners of the Superior Court.

Indeed, one Judiciary Committee member, Rep. Tim O'Brien, D-New Britain, was candid enough to express disappointment with the committee's inability to learn much about the nominee's views.

Judicial confirmation hearings like the one accorded Rogers guarantee that Connecticut buys its pigs in a poke. But there is a solution. First, pass legislation establishing that a judicial nominee's answering the Legislature’s questions about his views on particular cases and legal issues may not be construed as a violation of judicial ethics. And second, don't confirm nominees who refuse to answer fully and candidly. Under such a system the path to judicial appointment would run through candor rather than concealment.

Having been disgraced by scandal, Connecticut’s courts are on an openness kick. Honest and useful judicial confirmation hearings should be the next objective.