Yes, we need to know, as Mr. Hunt reminds us, the answers to several questions. Are there to be any limitations on civil rights statutes based on the post-Civil War constitutional amendments? Can the scope of Congress in regulating commerce be limited? Will environmental protection and rights granted to the disabled be extended indefinitely? How far is the inflamed marathon to separate church and state supposed to go? We may trust in God, but we may not be permitted to say so on government premises.
What is lost is of course the search for judicial temper. The ostensible challenge of the judiciary is to apply minds unlocked to the weighing of questions coming in for fresh exegesis. But those who seek out open minds in bright and learned advocates face one thorny problem especially, which is Roe v. Wade. Mr. Hunt acknowledges that "the Democrats emphasize (that issue) too much." But that decision is this epoch's Dred Scott decision. One could not reasonably ask the courts, after 1857, to train their minds exclusively on other issues than the right of Congress to chip away at the institution of slavery. Hunt cites two circuit court nominees, Michael McConnell and John Roberts -- "two of the most distinguished Bush appointees" -- as being "outspoken advocates of reversing the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights decision."
That question -- whether the unborn are human -- is the central political and philosophical issue of our time, and the Democratic Party, which does not allow to speak at its presidential conventions a Democrat who opposes Roe v. Wade, does what it can to protect the judicial flank from any Missouri Compromises that might loom, designed to interfere with abortion-at-will.
The only way a nominee for the Supreme Court can cope with that issue is to follow the lead of Clarence Thomas, who pretended not to have considered the question when asked about it by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But can we get satisfactory candidates for the courts who plead nescience as their primary qualification?