Exhibit A is Gorsuch’s response to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s 113-word question about the importance of precedent in the context of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that created a constitutional right to abortion: “Part of the value of precedent—it has lots of value—it has value, in and of itself, because it is our history, and our history has value intrinsically,” he said. Huh?

A skilled litigator might have explored such circular nonsense. Not Feinstein. She wanted to know about Roe as a “super precedent.”

“It has been reaffirmed many times—I can say that,” Gorsuch replied.

“Yes,” Feinstein said.

“Yes,” Gorsuch said.

“Yes, dozens.” And then Feinstein—apparently oblivious to the drivel she’d just been given—kept looking at her notes and proceeded to her next question, this one about a torture memo during the administration of George W. Bush.

Gorsuch also refused to talk about the constitutional correctness of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that upheld the right of married couples to use contraceptives. He couldn’t even bring himself to offer a view on whether he agreed with the justices’ unanimous 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Nonetheless, over the course of two days of testimony, he told senators 36 times he really “appreciated” the opportunity “to answer questions” and “to have a conversation with you.”

The nominee kept replaying the old saw that any comments on prior cases would compromise his impartiality on future analogous appeals. But that’s patent nonsense. You can analyze the persuasiveness of a justice’s opinion without committing to a future vote. Your analysis may differ from your personal politics. I, for example, think Roe v. Wade was a lousy legal ruling, even though I favor broadly liberal abortion policy. Moreover, if previously expressed viewpoints do disqualify a justice from sitting in a future case, how is it that actual prior rulings aren’t disqualifying? Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, in a dissent in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey in 1992, called for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Does that mean he should forever be barred from hearing an abortion case?

Once upon a time, Congress ceded the questioning at epic, televised hearings to adept questioners. In 1973, Sam Dash was enlisted from the Georgetown University law faculty to be chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee. He was a model cross-examiner: methodical, measured, and meticulous, scripting out the proceeding, as he recalled it, “like a detective story.” It was Dash who drew out Alexander Butterfield, a presidential aide, to acknowledge that President Richard Nixon knew about the audio-taping system in the Oval Office.

Part of Dash’s repertoire was an embrace of technology. He and his aides summarized every relevant document they could find—correspondence, government report, newspaper article—and put the summaries on a mainframe computer at the Library of Congress that was searchable by word. They had created a forebear to Google. When Dash was cross-examining former Attorney General John Mitchell, he kept getting “Well, I don’t remember” as an answer. So Dash, in real time, called the computer people, who found the evidence that Mitchell knew more. Within 10 minutes, they’d brought a printout to Dash in the hearing room.