SCOTUS CONFIRMATION HEARINGS

The Constitution does not specify qualifications for Justices such as age, education, profession, or native-born citizenship. A Justice does not have to be a lawyer or a law school graduate. the Appointments Clause of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, provides that the President of the United States nominates a justice and that the United States Senate provides advice and consent before the person is formally appointed to the Court.
The Constitution does not require, or even suggest, that quotas of race or sex be a consideration. The Constitution does not define advice and consent. It is not a constitutional requirement that the senate hold confirmation hearings.
The lack of specifications would indicate that the people who wrote the Constitution assumed that those participating in the nominating process, and the advice and consent process would be people of sound mind and people who would have the best interest of the country in mind.
What we have learned is that over time it has become accepted that a nominee must have a law degree and must have prior judicial experience. It is believed that a high rating from legal communities is important. This limitation has failed the United States. Most law schools no longer teach the Constitution, they teach Supreme Court Opinions. The question and answers in the confirmation process are centered on these rulings or opinions. It is totally ignored that according to the United States Constitution a Supreme Court ruling is an opinion and not law. Perhaps some, if not all Supreme Court nominees, should be people without law degrees and people who have never held the title of judge. The assumption would be that the only guideline these people would use in rendering opinions would be the Constitution of the United States.
Advice and consent mean just that. It is not required that days of televised pontifications and perfidious answers be endured. A simple floor vote could constitute as consent. The long-drawn-out questions and answers reveal little if anything about the nominee. The nominee is generally nimble enough or is coached to give only vague answers. Granted, some nominees are more entertaining than others, but should that be a sought-after quality.
What has been revealed in these hearings over the years is how manipulative and dishonest the Senators are. We learned this particularly in the Bork, Thomas, and Kavanaugh hearings. In the more recent hearings, we have also learned how intellectually inadequate many of the Senators are. Senators Hirono, Booker, and then Senator Harris but now Vice President Harris have shown that the ability to reason and think is not a criterion considered by voters, or at least those who voted for them.
The Supreme Court is the third branch of government. It was always intended to be a non-political and the weakest branch of government. It has become the most powerful branch of government, and in doing so has become political. Character and reasonableness for nomination are not considerations, but political leanings, and now race and gender are primary considerations for nomination and confirmation.
The transformation of our nation from a republic to a democracy has been greatly enabled by this process because it has changed the court to not only become the most powerful branch, but also the most political branch of government It is the branch that dictates all policy in our nation, policy that was intended to be primarily controlled by the legislative branch,the branch closest to the people.