After some needless foot-dragging, the Senate Judiciary Committee is finally scheduled to start hearings next week on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.
When those hearings get under way, more than just the views and qualifications of Thomas - a black conservative and an appeals court judge - will be on trial.Also on trial will be the principle that the President is entitled to appointees of his own choosing as long as they are reasonably well qualified.
There are serious questions on this score because of lingering doubts about the willingness of the Senate to avoid a political hatchet job on Thomas like the one it did on Robert Bork.
The doubts persist because some of those who opposed Bork on the grounds that he applied the law too narrowly are now opposing Thomas on the supposedly opposite contention that he would sometimes put moral law ahead of written law.
Even the American Bar Association is not above such incredible flip flops. Remember how the bar's judicial rating committee unanimously found Bork "qualified" when he was nominated to the appeals court in 1982 only to have four of its members insist he was "not qualified" when nominated to the Supreme Court just five years later?
Now Thomas seems to have suffered a similar, mysterious erosion in the eyes of the ABA. In 1989, when he too was confirmed for the appeals court, the panel's "qualified" rating was unanimous. But now two of its members insist Thomas is "unqualified" and another abstained from voting after he was nominated to the Supreme Court.
The ABA is supposed to assess nominees' professional competence and integrity, not their politics. Instead, just the opposite seems to be happening.
By all means, the installation of Thomas likely would strengthen the hold of conservatives on the Supreme Court and probably step up its rightward trend on such issues as privacy, abortion, affirmative action, and states' rights.
But with conservatives already in the majority on the high court, the promotion of Thomas would not bring pivotal change. For that matter, the court's present conservative bloc is not monolithic. On the contrary, Byron White and Sandra Day O'Connor have broken with conservatives on several major cases in recent years. So has David H. Souter, who has shown moderate tendencies in First Amendment and discrimination cases.
In any event, the Supreme Court got a long string of liberal appointees when Democrats occupied the White House. Now that conservatives are in the Oval Office, what's sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander.