WASHINGTON — On April 3, 1962, President John F. Kennedy nominated Byron R. White to the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed him by a voice vote less than two weeks later, after a perfunctory 90-minute hearing during which the nominee smoked cigarettes and doodled while senators praised his legal skills.

On Monday, one of White’s former law clerks, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, will appear at his own Supreme Court confirmation hearing. It will last for days and reflect the brutal politics of a polarized era.

In 2002, as a lawyer in private practice, Judge Gorsuch recalled his old boss’s smooth ride and rued the modern judicial confirmation process, which he described in an article as “an ideological food fight.”

Fifteen years later, the atmosphere has grown even more rancorous and sour. In particular, Senate Republicans’ refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court last year was a shock to the system, said Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford.