I somehow missed this news, but apparently the new Chief Justice nominee Chase Rogers has said that she will not answer questions before she is appointed. From the Journal Inquirer:

But Judge Rogers has started out the wrong way in pursuit of confirmation by the General Assembly. She says she won’t be answering questions from the news media or the public until the General Assembly decides whether to appoint her.

This is ironic in light of the governor’s observation in announcing Rogers’ nomination — that the Supreme Court particularly and the rest of the judiciary generally “continue to grapple with issues of transparency, accessibility, and accountability.”

Just how will Rogers, as administrative chief of the third branch of state government, grapple with those issues? Of course Rogers will be glad to answer the questions of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, but the recent scandals and incidents of shameful secrecy in the judiciary are partly the result of the committee’s own negligence and deference, so there is no assurance that the committee will inquire about everything of importance. To the rest of the state Rogers is saying, in effect, “Leave me alone until I’ve got an eight-year term and you can’t do anything about it.”

Aldon Hynes posted about this on MyLeftNutmeg, and raised some intersting questions:

… what I want to know is how Ms. Rogers, as chief justice in Connecticut would administer the Connecticut courts. What will she do to open up the courts in Connecticut, to make them more transparent, to make the Connecticut judicial system one that is looked up across the country and inspires the citizens of Connecticut to have confidence and respect for their states courts?And, no, these are not general philosophical questions, they are the basis for very specific questions. What would our new chief justice do to encourage judges to allow cameras in their courts? What would our new chief justice do to encourage the role of new media, such as blogs and citizen journalists? Would there be a WiFi enabled media room open to both traditional and new media journalists in courtrooms, the way there has been in the Federal Courthouse in Washington during the Libby trial? What bold ideas would our chief justice have above and beyond these ideas?

According to Chris Powell’s article, Chase Rogers isn’t affiliated with a political party. There’s no paper trail of any obvious political involvement. She’s spent 14 years as a lawyer at a big firm in Stamford and eight years serving as an Appellate Court judge.

While in the case of the judiciary, not having strong political ties is somewhat of a virtue, that doesn’t mean that a judicial appointee shouldn’t be attuned to the political climate in which they will operate. And the current and most recent past political climate has been one of secrecy and corruption. Again from Powell’s Jou article:

Judges argue that they should not answer questions of law that may come before them in particular cases, lest they prejudice such cases, but this is a dishonest dodge. For judges have been legislating from the bench and deciding cases according to their general political philosophies since courts were invented. Indeed, judges often are appointed precisely because of those philosophies. And while the judiciary rightly is a bit insulated from politics, through his disgrace it was the great gift of Connecticut’s just-departed chief justice, William J. Sullivan, to show the state that behind their secrecy the courts are just as political and manipulative as the rest of the government.

This is the time for Rogers to show that the judiciary will head into a new open direction. By refusing to answer questions, she is indicating that we are perhaps in store for more of the same.