" IT'S NOT ENOUGH for you to say, 'I will follow the law, Senator.' We need to be convinced that nominees aren't far out of the mainstream," snarled Chuck Schumer, chairing last week's confirmation hearing for Miguel Estrada before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Clarence Thomas came before this distinguished committee and said he had no views on important constitutional issues of the day. . . . But the minute [he] got to the Court, he was doctrinaire. He obviously had deeply held views that he shielded from the Committee. . . . And there's still a lot of simmering blood up here about that." Simmering blood was about all that was up at the hearing for Estrada, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Democrats spent much of the hearing trying to tarnish Estrada's credibility on the matter of whether he had tried to prevent Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy from hiring liberal law clerks. Mainly, though, the majority used the occasion to urge Estrada to ask the Justice Department to release private decision memos he had written while working in the Clinton-era solicitor general's office--a demand instigated by his former superior, Paul Bender, who calls Estrada "too much of an ideologue to be an appellate judge." This is the same Paul Bender, however, who gave Estrada a glowing performance evaluation, laid out for the committee by Orrin Hatch: "States the operative facts and applicable law completely and persuasively . . . with concern for fairness, clarity, simplicity, and conciseness. . . . Is extremely knowledgeable. . . . Inspires co-workers by example." The White House refused to release the Estrada memos back in June. But Schumer announced that he "would be reluctant" to hold a vote without them. Such writings have been released in the past, Schumer maintained, in cases where other materials were not available to show how a nominee would vote as a judge, and this was such a case. Schumer proceeded to enter into the record memos written by Judge Frank Easterbrook when Easterbrook had worked in the solicitor general's office, claiming them as precedent. But a Justice Department official insists the memos must have been leaked. "Easterbrook's SG work product," the official said, "was not released by either the Justice Department or the nominee--it seems to have been an unauthorized disclosure by an unknown individual." The official denied that the department has provided the Senate any "sensitive, confidential legal recommendations" written by any individuals from the SG's office who are now sitting judges. And the memos produced by the department back in 1987 during the confirmation hearing for Robert Bork, a former solicitor general, were not of a deliberative nature. Furthermore, all of the living former solicitors general--from Archibald Cox to Seth Waxman--have concurred that the release of such candid information would harm the "unbridled, open exchange of ideas" required for "high-level decisionmaking." Schumer wouldn't let go. "We're trying to figure out how you think here," he complained to the nominee at the end of the hearing. "You're not letting us get to know you. . . . I still want to see the SG memos." BORN IN HONDURAS in 1961, Estrada came to the United States as a teenager speaking little English. He graduated with honors from Columbia College and Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, served as a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, and worked in the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. solicitor general from 1992 to 1997. He is currently a partner with the D.C. law firm Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, where his primary practice is appellate law. Estrada has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, he received a unanimous "well-qualified" rating from the American Bar Association, and he has been described by Ron Klain, former counsel to Vice President Al Gore, as someone who will "faithfully apply the precedents of his court, and the Supreme Court, without regard to his personal views or his political perspectives." The White House is battling hard for Estrada, who, if confirmed, would be the first Hispanic on the D.C. Circuit. Even White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, thought by most Beltway conservatives to be Estrada's competition for a seat on the Supreme Court, took to the op-ed page of the Washington Post the day of the hearing to defend Estrada's record and urge the Democrats to move faster to confirm judicial nominees. The White House has also taken pains with the Hispanic groups--and almost every major Latino organization is supporting Estrada. Even La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), while they express "grave concerns" about Estrada's judicial temperament, have not yet opposed his nomination. The two exceptions are the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (all Democrats) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). The latter has gone so far as to imply that Estrada is not "Hispanic" enough. Senator Patrick Leahy picked up this argument at the hearing, calling Estrada "the son of a prominent lawyer and a bank vice president" and a product of private schools, who "did not exactly share in the experiences of most Latinos." Estrada replied that his father was "a lawyer, not a prominent lawyer," and he'd gone to Catholic school. "I have never known what it means to be poor or rich or very rich," he continued. "I have been fortunate. . . . I have achieved a standard of living that I could not have achieved in my home country." The Democrats pressed hard on ideology. The back-and-forth heated up when Schumer asked a carefully worded question lifted from a piece by Jack Newfield in the latest issue of the Nation: "Have you ever told anyone that you do not believe any person should clerk for Justice Kennedy because that person is too liberal, not conservative enough, or because that person did not have the appropriate ideology, politics, or judicial philosophy, or because you were concerned that person would influence Justice Kennedy to take positions you did not want him taking?" Estrada said no. Republicans had a field day with another passage of the Nation piece, a quote from Schumer that "Estrada is like a Stealth missile--with a nose cone--coming out of the right wing's deepest silo." For a while, the hearing turned to other matters.Wisconsin's Russ Feingold threw in some questions about anti-loitering statutes in Chicago and racial profiling. Hatch argued for keeping the Department of Justice memos confidential. Herb Kohl asked the nominee about the commerce clause. But then Senator Dianne Feinstein read from the Nation article. "Perhaps some of the most damaging evidence against Estrada," it said, "comes from two lawyers he interviewed for Supreme Court clerkships. Both were unwilling to be identified by name for fear of reprisals." According to Newfield's piece, one of the persons Estrada had interviewed believed that Estrada was giving him an "ideological litmus test"--"a lot of unfair, ideological questions, a lot about the death penalty, which I told him I thought was immoral." Newfield quoted the second person as saying, "Miguel told me that his job was to prevent liberal clerks from being hired. He told me he was screening out liberals because a liberal clerk had influenced Justice Kennedy to side with the majority and write a pro-gay-rights decision in a case known as Romer v. Evans." "Did this happen?" asked Feinstein. "Justice Kennedy picks his own clerks," Estrada answered. "If I said anything remotely on that subject, it would have been a joke." But after lunch, Estrada decided to clarify his answer--perhaps he felt the blood was simmering again. Or perhaps it occurred to him that Schumer had been trying to trip him up. He qualified his remarks by stating that at some point he might have told Kennedy that an interviewee's views were too strong, ideologically or politically, and that the individual therefore could not function well as a clerk. "I don't know every conversation with every human being in my life," he said. "I have no idea who this person [in the Nation] could be. I have no idea of the circumstances." Schumer pounced. "Are you retracting the 'No' you gave to me? . . . If so, I think we have some credibility problems here." "Wait-a-second" was the look on Hatch's face, before he interjected, "This is really offensive." Then, turning to the nominee, "I don't want you bullied by the committee, and you don't have to take it." This gave the senators something to wrangle over for much of the afternoon--when they weren't harping on the memos, which the Justice Department still declines to release. As the hearing meandered to an inconclusive adjournment, there was no end in sight for a confirmation battle that has lasted over 500 days. Melissa Seckora is an editorial associate with National Review.