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By Root 878 0

one sigh erupted from the seats behind me as Specter returned to the questioning and I once more gave my explanation. Clearly, neither of us would budge from our position. Something in the back of my head said, “Just say what he wants you to say and get on with it.” But I was much too stubborn to do that. And the more he pursued it, the more inclined I was to resist. Digging in was, perhaps, for me one way of hanging on to some amount of my dignity. By now I knew that his questions were both insincere and ill informed. Though I tried to answer him, I was equally determined that the senator not put words in my mouth. With every question he asked, it became clearer that despite any declaration to the contrary, he viewed me as an adversary. Rather than seeking to elicit information, his questioning sought to elicit a conclusion that he had reached before the hearing began. When he questioned me about comments I had made to a Kansas City Star reporter, his purpose of finding some inconsistency in my account became ever clearer.

“When you say that Judge Thomas would have made a better Supreme Court Justice, you are saying that, at one state of his career, he would have made an adequate Supreme Court Justice.”

“Well, I am not sure that that’s what I am saying at all. I am sure that what I was trying to give to that reporter was my assessment of him objectively without considering the personal information that I had.” I had caught on to the fact that I could concede nothing in responding to Senator Specter.

“Isn’t the long and short of it, Professor Hill, that when you spoke to the Kansas City Star reporter, that you were saying, at one point in his career he would have been okay for the Supreme Court?”

Explaining my feelings to this man was useless, for whatever I said he would doubt. Even inconsequential responses met with his skepticism. “No,” I responded with no intention of saying any more. I had tired of his tactics. There was a pause of about twenty seconds. Perhaps the longest of the day. Neither of us spoke. The silence was palpable and intense. It seemed the room had grown accustomed to my explaining myself, but by now I was weary of it.

Finally, the senator broke the silence. “What were you saying as to Judge Thomas’s qualifications for the Supreme Court when you spoke to the reporter in August?” For the first time in his questioning, Senator Specter asked me what I was saying instead of suggesting what I had said.

“One of the comments that the reporter made was that some have complained that he has a set ideology and that he won’t be able to review cases on their own. My comment went to whether or not he did have that set ideology and it was that now he did, whereas a few years ago, I did not find that to be so.”

Senator Specter’s more open-ended question gave me a chance to explain myself. This form of question is asked in order to elicit information from witnesses believed to be trustworthy. In a nonadversarial, fact-finding hearing, the more open-ended questioning is appropriate because it allows for a greater exchange of information without assuming a conclusion. This was a small victory in what had become a battle of wills.

Senator Specter’s questioning on the USA Today article was an attempt to indict Jim Brudney of Senator Metzenbaum’s office. Senator Specter hoped to get me to say that Brudney had promised me that if I signed the affidavit, Judge Thomas would withdraw. This would lend support to the theory offered by Senator Hatch that my statement was a part of a Democratic conspiracy to derail the nomination. When the public demanded a hearing on my charges, Senator Hatch accused Senator Metzenbaum of leaking the FBI report to the press. Though Hatch offered no proof and Senator Metzenbaum had denied it, Senator Specter pursued Hatch’s lead, operating on the preposterous theory that I had been duped into raising the claim by a promise from Jim Brudney.

Senator Specter’s theory assumed not only a level of naiveté of which even I was incapable but also gross dishonesty on the part of Jim Brudney. There