Legal Beat

When President Bush was in the White House, Sensenbrenner controlled four seats on the commission that makes judicial and U.S. attorney suggestions because he was the state's highest-ranking Republican member of Congress. Democratic Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl each got to name two members while the other three members are law school deans and appointees of Wisconsin's state bar.

But now that a Democrat is in the White House, each senator will get four seats and Sensenbrenner is entitled to none. That's the same set as during the Clinton administration, the last time one party controlled the White House and both of Wisconsin's Senate seats.

Nevertheless, Sensenbrenner complained to the Journal Sentinel that Feingold and Kohl didn't even consult him. "They had a chance to be bipartisan," he said. "They played the partisan card."

Wisconsin first adopted its nominating commission in 1979, five years after the first one came into being in Florida. The 1970s were the heyday for such commissions when 30 states had created them, according to Forrest Maltzman, a political science professor at George Washington University who has studied them for a forthcoming book on judicial selection.The impetus was President Carter's order creating a national nomination commission for Circuit Court judges and urged senators to do the same for district court nominees.

One or both senators in eight states currently employ some kind of judicial nominating commissions in helping them make recommendations, according to the American Judicature Society. Rachel Caufield, a research fellow at the American Judicature Society, says the most useful ones "institutionalize bipartisanship."

What remains unstudied is how much presidents actually pay attention to these commissions. "At the end of the day, Article III dictates this is still the president's choice," Caufield says.