The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) Supreme entertainment Last night’s announcement of Judge Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court nominee kicked off yet another fierce political battle over a seat on the bench. With the Supreme Court wielding enormous power, that's to be expected. But it doesn't have to be that way. From independent selection committees to cross-party nominations of candidates, lawmakers in parts of Europe have found ways to give judges more independence rather than aligning them with party ideologies. In Germany, for example, a committee of 12 members representing all parties in parliament selects a nominee behind closed doors. The parties take turns in proposing candidates, and a two-thirds majority of parliament is needed to confirm a nominee. That creates broad consensus and usually ends up empowering moderates. "The nomination process in Germany certainly has no negative impact on the quality of the work of our Supreme Court," says Christian Pestalozza, a law professor at Berlin's Free University. In the United Kingdom, nominees are vetted and selected by an independent committee whose members are often unaware of the candidates' political alignments. Similar committees are in place elsewhere in Europe, including Norway and Denmark. "The overriding principle is merit," says Felicity Matthews, a governance professor at the University of Sheffield — though she notes that “many [British] judges are white and male because they are expected to have at least 20 to 40 years of high-level previous experience." Many European countries also enforce term and age limits rather than giving the kind of lifetime appointments that can turn American nominations into actuarial battles. Then there’s France, which simply skipped the idea of a Supreme Court altogether. It instead has a Constitutional Council with few powers and a preference for narrow decision-making. French people generally view the U.S. Supreme Court as far too powerful given that voters have no direct sway over its composition, says French legal expert Julien Sterck. Europe’s attempts to make courts apolitical are born of the experience of World War II and Hitler’s takeover of the German judiciary. Previous attempts to weaken judicial independence on the continent have set off alarm bells. And now, once again, all eyes are on the U.S. — Rick Noack Then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates speaks during a press conference at the Department of Justice in 2016. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) The big question On Monday, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates ordered the Department of Justice not to defend President Trump's executive order on immigration. Within hours, she was fired. Her dismissal rocked Washington, drawing comparisons to the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" of 1973, when former president Richard Nixon sacked Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, leading Nixon’s attorney general and deputy attorney general to resign in protest. So we asked Post national security reporter Ellen Nakashima: Just how big a deal is Yates' firing? "Yates, who was appointed under the Obama administration, told the department’s lawyers in her four-paragraph letter that she was 'not convinced' the order was 'lawful.' Moreover, she said, her job was to ensure that the positions the DOJ takes in court meet the department's obligation 'to stand for what is right.' "Democrats have called her action heroic. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate minority leader, called Yates a 'profile in courage.' She was fired, he said, because she would not defend the executive order in the courts 'on the belief that it was illegal, perhaps unconstitutional.' "But others say her letter was a mistake, including legal experts who dislike Trump’s order. Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University Law School, said you’d need a 'very compelling reason' to order your department not to assist the president — and Yates didn’t provide one. "What happened Monday night was 'less a massacre than a suicide,' Turley told me. "Others, like Jack Goldsmith, a former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, say Yates should have resigned rather than voice her displeasure by issuing the letter. An attorney general can advise the president about an order’s wisdom, he said, but does not typically refuse to defend an order because she disagrees with the policy basis. "Moreover, said Goldsmith — who famously rescinded some of the Bush administration’s torture memos — her reasons for writing the letter were weak. She did not, he noted, conclude that the executive order was unlawful. Nor did she say defending it in court would be unreasonable. "One former department lawyer who backed Yates’ views but not her action said that she nonetheless got the big decision right: 'The important thing is she refused to carry it out.'" | 