doc_text: Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D., Ohio) has said that the Senate is "entitled to a direct, categorical answer" on Judge Thomas's stance on abortion, and on Roe v. Wade.
  Thurgood Marshall's example makes it plain, though, that Mr. Thomas may refuse to give that categorical answer.
  During the Marshall hearings in 1967, the issue of the day was not abortion but crime, and the most controversial case was Miranda v. Arizona.
  Sen. John L. McClellan (D., Ark.) pressed Mr. Marshall to reveal his opinion of the case.
  Mr. Marshall refused, explaining that there were other cases pending on variations and interpretations of Miranda and that, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, he would have to rule on those cases: "On decisions that are certain to be re-examined in the court, it would be improper for me to comment on them in advance. . . .
  From all the hearings I have read about, it has been considered and recognized as improper for a nominee to a judgeship to comment on a case he will have to pass on."
  Sen. McClellan emphasized that he did not want comments on a future case, but on a past case, Miranda.
  But Mr. Marshall held firm, stating that future cases would be related to interpretations of Miranda, and that the issue of crime was still very controversial.
  Sen. Sam Ervin (D., N.C.) attempted to get Mr. Marshall to discuss the case law that preceded Miranda, in much the same way that Sen. Joe Biden (D., Del.) attempted to persuade Judge Souter to comment on the right of privacy at issue in the abortion cases, by way of Griswold v. Connecticut.
  But Mr. Marshall would not even remark on the 14 words in the Fifth Amendment concerning self-incrimination.
  Sen. Ervin, exasperated, pointed out that since the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is so broad that a case on practically any issue might come before it, Mr. Marshall's theory meant that the committee would have a difficult time asking any questions about Mr. Marshall's judicial philosophy.
  "It is a problem," Mr. Marshall said, though a problem for the committee, not the nominee.
  In the end, Mr. Marshall would comment only on such long-decided cases as the Gibbons v. Ogden case of 1824, which concerned issues of such vintage that they were no longer controversial.
  Some of Mr. Thomas's detractors have openly worried that he seems too distant from his origins in the segregated South.
  Eleanor Holmes Norton, delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia, said that she hoped he would "bring to the bench his personal experience as a poor black man."
  Harvard Law School's Derrick Bell fears that Mr. Thomas would "look black but think white."
  But such personal experiences are irrelevant to the work of a justice of the Supreme Court, according to Thurgood Marshall.
  "A judge is not permitted to use his own personal views under any circumstances," he said, "but if the particular decision-maker, whether he be judge or justice or magistrate, applies the Constitution to the facts and it comes out that way, that is inevitable."
  Sometimes the outcome of a case is incidentally related to a justice's private views, but personal preferences can play no part in the decision-making process.
  Such crusading zeal is inappropriate, despite the 1990 call of Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) for a nominee with "fire in the belly."
  "There is nothing personal allowed, nothing personal," Mr. Marshall emphasized.
  Justices "shall not use their personal views, and indeed, they take an oath not to do so."
  The intellectual leaders of the coalition that defeated the Bork nomination, notably Laurence Tribe in his 1987 book, "God Bless This Honorable Court," insisted that the Senate had the right -- and the responsibility -- to scrutinize a nominee's general political or judicial philosophy.
  This issue was raised in the Marshall hearings too.
  Clearly a senator may vote any way he wishes on a nomination, and for any reason; but not all votes nor all reasons are consistent with the duties of senators, and with the manner in which they ought to behave.
  This thought was expressed most eloquently by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.), whose primary contribution to the Marshall hearings was elucidating the normative guidelines for senators.
  Sen. Kennedy stressed a central point both in the committee room and before the full Senate: The Senate is to assess qualifications; it is not to examine political or judicial philosophy.
  "We are not charged with the responsibility of approving a man to be associate justice of the Supreme Court only if his views always coincide with our own," Sen. Kennedy stated.
  "We are not seeking a nominee for the Supreme Court who will express the majority view of the Senate on every given issue, or on a given issue of fundamental importance."
  It was Sen. Kennedy's view that only the professional background of a nominee was relevant for senatorial consideration, not his substantive views.
  The question of "ideological balance" on the court was also raised in this context, and addressed by Sen. Roman Hruska (D., Neb.).
  Sen. Hruska had received letters stating that Mr. Marshall was too liberal for the Supreme Court, that he would upset the "balance" between liberals and conservatives.
  Sen. Hruska dismissed these fears as irrelevant.
  "The nominating power lies with the president of the United States; and if it is his desire to appoint someone he considers a liberal, that is his prerogative.
  If he wants to nominate someone he considers a conservative, that is also his prerogative."
  The role of the Senate is to "inquire into the integrity, the competence and the record of a man," not his ideology.
  Several other issues were brought up during the Marshall hearings that have a bearing on Judge Thomas's case.
  Sen. Kennedy believed that because Mr. Marshall had been moved through the Judiciary Committee before, the Senate could "move expeditiously ahead with his confirmation."
  Mr. Thomas, too, has been previously approved by the committee.
  Mr. Marshall had been accused of having communist ties, in part because in one case he cited a work by Herbert Aptheker, a leading U.S. communist theoretician.
  Committee Chairman James Eastland (D., Miss.) raised this issue, but only to allow Mr. Marshall to clarify the facts, and to state that he was not a communist.
  Mr. Thomas's supposed ties to Louis Farrakhan seem entitled to equal treatment.
  Finally, the fact that Mr. Marshall was black was treated as noteworthy, but not determinative.
  In the case of Judge Thomas, blackness ought to be regarded the same way.
  The fact that Mr. Thomas's judicial views are not the same as those of Thurgood Marshall is a reflection of the increasingly pluralistic nature of black society, but hardly an issue worthy of senatorial consideration.
  As the second black American to serve on the Supreme Court, Judge Thomas will shoulder many responsibilities; not because he is black, but because he will hold a lofty office.
  --- Mr. Robbins is a historian in Ayer, Mass.
summary_text: Opponents of the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court maintain that the nominee should be required to answer specific questions about his personal and philosophical beliefs.
  Yet the justice whom the nominee would replace took a firm stand against answering just such questions at his hearings in 1967.
  Thurgood Marshall said "A judge is not permitted to use his own personal views under any circumstances."
  At those hearings Senator Edward Kennedy stressed a central point both in the committee room and before the full Senate: The Senate is to assess qualifications; it is not to examine political or judicial philosophy.