ABSTRACT
Chief Justice Rehnquist and Senator Specter agreed the Court should play the dominant role the Happy Convention gives it. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito however, in their 2005–2006 hearings, despite close questioning, were non-committal. Justice Alito, at his nomination hearing, was asked by Senator Sam Brownback whether Congress had the constitutional power to define the Court’s jurisdiction. Senator Leahy asked Justice Alito his view of Senator Specter’s 1986 questioning of Chief Justice Rehnquist. Senator Arlen Specter, the most brilliant advocate of the Happy Convention, developed the anti-stripper argument elegantly and inexorably—again granting its premise—in his 1986 questioning of Justice William Rehnquist when Rehnquist was nominated to be Chief Justice. Senator Specter’s Happy Convention view assumes an entity which defines its own powers. The Happy Convention gets its members re-elected, but the institution won’t get any respect until it starts performing a lot better.
