The most common explanation for why judicial confirmation hearings have become such empty rituals is that the Senate's rejection of Judge Robert Bork in 1987 -- after the conservative Reagan nominee had answered dozens of questions about his "originalist" judicial philosophy -- proved that candor could be fatal for any nominee.

Since the Bork nomination, "the goal for judicial nominees has been to skate through by saying as little as possible as politely as possible," the New York Times observed in an editorial Tuesday.

There is much truth in this. But Bork's fate did not prove that nominees have to hide or misrepresent their judicial philosophies in order to get confirmed.

For one thing, Bork probably would have been defeated even if he had ducked the questions about his judicial philosophy, as subsequent nominees have done.

For another, Sotomayor very probably would have been confirmed by a wide margin -- albeit with a bit more difficulty -- even if she had been far more forthcoming about her views of the law, and less determined to deny the apparent meaning of her controversial past statements.