Continuing NationalJournal.com's occasional series on books about the confirmation process, we've pulled out some uniquely applicable portions of a new book released this month, The Next Justice, by Princeton provost Christopher Eisgruber.

Eisgruber, a former New York University law professor and clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens, argues in the book that, contrary to popular belief, senators should not use the hearings to "interrogate" judicial nominees about their records, since the heavy lifting on researching nominees' records should have been done earlier. Instead, he says, the hearings should be an opportunity for senators to "refine their understandings, to describe their view of the candidate's judicial philosophy, and to convince the public of that view's validity."

The following excerpt is from Chapter 8, "Should The Senate Defer?" An excerpt from Chapter 9 will follow tomorrow.

Although questioning the nominee might be the most obvious way for senators to assess his or her judicial philosophy, hearings have been strikingly ineffective for that purpose. With the singular exception of the Bork hearings, Senate questions to nominees have consistently failed to produce illuminating information. Senators and their staffs have demonstrated tremendous ingenuity in crafting questions designed to break free from the "subtle minuet" of the confirmation hearings, but their efforts have failed. That is not the senators' fault; no question can compel an unwilling nominee to disclose his or her judicial philosophy. So we seem to be at an impasse: senators have an obligation to assess a nominee's judicial philosophy, but no set of questions can compel a nominee to disclose his or her philosophy. What are senators to do?