It’s the only time when a judge enters the room that no one stands up. The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justices are failing America and perhaps it’s time someone stand up for a different process.

Anyone with an interest in politics or national news would know that last week Judge Samuel Alito sat through the confirmation hearings in the Senate. In all likelihood, Alito will be confirmed by the Judiciary Committee and in the Senate in what is expected to be a complete party-line vote. The Democrats will have virtually no chance of a filibuster and Alito will soon be sitting on the bench of our highest court. Regardless of my personal views on Alito, I think the confirmation hearings have become nothing more than a war room for media frenzy and political dramatization.

The networks were saying that Alito would be getting “grilled.”

Other terms like “roasted” were being used. The photographers and reporters crammed in the committee room and waited for the battle that would take place. Armed with talking points and often inaccurate facts, senators on both sides of the aisle were certain to deliver what the media was expecting. In some cases, the questioning that Alito was undergoing seemed completely irrelevant to whether he would make a good justice. And, didn’t the McCain anti-torture amendment on interrogation pass?

We are the generation of technology from iPods to wire taps. We should be concerned about our economy and concerned about whether Fourth Amendment rights are being jeopardized. Surely there’s more to these hearings than arguing whether judicial precedence should be overturned. I also think it was very shortsighted by one senator to suggest that Roe vs. Wade has merit on being overturned simply because Plessy vs. Ferguson was overturned.

We need a better way of evaluating whether justices should be on the Supreme Court, one that doesn’t involve political dramatization. We should avoid taking justices through the low slums of unproductive committee hearings in order to get them to the high court of the land.

Another novel idea: He who does not follow the law should not make judicial appointments.