ABSTRACT
As common sense suggests, the record since 1970 does demonstrate that the judicial philosophies of nominees do matter, at least to a degree. Neither the Burger Court nor the Rehnquist Court had the same record that a second or third Warren Court would have had. That intuition is that some people are more inclined or better able than are others to maximize reliance on these external sources of authority and to minimize the influence of the personal. The jurist whom nominees frequently invoke as a model for this kind of restrained, conscientious judge is John Marshall Harlan. Some nominees refer senators to the various factors that the Supreme Court has from time to time indicated are relevant to deciding when to depart from prior decisions. Although the practice of sticking with precedent is often associated in popular understanding with stodgy legalism, it was a shrewd subject for Specter to choose in a political setting.
