Confirmation Reflection Confirmation, a film that details the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that occurred after President H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to fill the associate justice role, recently vacated Thurgood Marshall. Marshall was the first African-American justice to sit on the Supreme Court and is known as well for being the lead counsel of the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education, which intended to desegregate public schools. Before the hearing began, Senator Edward Kennedy’s aide Ricki Seidman, chief investigator of all Supreme Court justices, followed up with Anita Hill, professor of law at University of Oklahoma, after an FBI interview that accused Thomas of sexually harassing Anita when he was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ten years earlier. In addition to the allegations set forth by Hill, Thomas faced opposition from civil rights activists because they thought his conservative stances would reverse the civil rights gains of Thurgood Marshall. The activists described Thomas’ nomination as an insult on “life and legacy of Thurgood Marshall and everything he stood for”. Flo Kennedy, a feminist attorney and civil rights activist, suggested the judiciary committee …show more content…
The Senators employed the premise of the Attitudinal Model of how justices make decisions because Senators voiced their support or opposition of Thomas’ nomination based on their ideological alignment. Senators who shared similar ideologies to Thomas were largely in favor of approving his confirmation, while those who differed were largely opposed. These Senators also strived to keep and gain further support from their constituencies during the hearing since the midterm elections were