Bipartisan Judicial Screening Panels??

Cooling Off Judicial Selections is a very interesting September 8, 2008 National Law Journal article (registration required). It discusses  a recent recommendation by the American Bar Association to expand the use of bipartisan judicial nomination commissions. As the article states:

The ABA proposed that both U.S. senators in each state establish a bipartisan commission that would provide a recommended short list from which the senators could send their top picks to the president. The president would have the option to nominate a candidate from those top picks for confirmation before the full Senate.

The ABA's recommendation would change the selection process in most states, where a senior senator, a Republican during the Bush administration, sends his or her own top candidates to the president.

But the concept mirrors the selection process in eight states: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

The commissions in those states involve dozens of lawyers. Most agreed that commissions provide better qualified candidates and tend to be nonpartisan in vetting applicants. At the same time, many are skeptical about whether bipartisan commissions depoliticize the selection of federal judges enough to necessarily speed up the nomination or confirmation process.

This sounds like a wonderful idea to me. However, is it practical?? I do not believe that it is possible to totally eliminate politics from the appointment process.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein