Long before he became exasperated by Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan dodging his pointed questions, Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., had teed up a surefire way for the Senate to improve the process for considering judicial nominations. The prickly Pennsylvanian said that the Senate should reject those hoping to sit on the nation's highest court if they are not forthright about their judicial philosophy. Nominees would have to be more responsive, he figured, if they knew they might otherwise get shot down.

"In my judgment, the Senate should resist, if not refuse to confirm, Supreme Court nominees who refuse to answer questions on fundamental issues," Specter wrote in his 2000 autobiography, Passion for Truth. "Senators should not have to gamble or guess about a candidate's philosophy but should be able to judge on the basis of the candidate's expressed views."

The irascible former district attorney, who was defeated in a May primary, might just follow through on that opinion as he nears the end of his 30-year Senate career. He appears to be the only Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who might vote against Kagan. "I'm thinking about it," he told reporters on June 30, after he repeatedly took issue with Kagan ducking questions, such as whether she would vote to take up certain cases if she were on the Supreme Court. She demurred, saying that she needed to read the briefs or hear arguments before taking a position.

Specter, who chaired the Judiciary Committee for two years as a Republican, has plenty of company in the academic community -- and some among his Senate colleagues -- who agree that the confirmation process for Supreme Court justices is in need of repair. Frustration over proceedings in which nominees have ducked and dodged questions and past instances in which nominees say one thing to senators and then act quite differently on the Court have convinced some observers that it is time to change certain aspects of the confirmation process. But if the process is broken, no consensus has emerged on how it might be fixed -- and some senators argue that flawed or not, there is no good alternative.

National Journal subscribers can read more here.