The Law: A Better Way to Pick Supreme Court Justices?

The Judges of the Supreme Court of the land must be not only great jurists, they must be great constructive statesmen.

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1902

To hear most legal authorities tell it, the nation's 14th Republican President has forgotten the standards proclaimed by the eighth. Upset by the thought of G. Harrold Carswell on the Supreme Court, some experts have revived an old and fascinating question: Is there no better way to pick members of the world's most influential tribunal?

Article II of the Constitution calls for presidential selection "with the advice and consent" of...