AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR AND FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL JOHN DEAN Today the entire federal judiciary has become politicized. Both parties want to place judges on the courts that reflect their political views. This is a serious problem, for Americans are fast losing faith in the impartiality of the Judicial Branch � and not without good reason. The primary function of our federal courts is to resolve disputes between citizens and the political branches of government. But partisans on both sides of the political divide want to use the courts � from the Supreme Court on down � as another political branch, a means to impose a political solution while resolving the dispute. If anyone doubts this is the case, I suggest they look at Bush v. Gore. A few more cases like that and the Courts will lose all credibility. The reason the Senate should look at a nominee's philosophy is that it is time to reject nominees who are political ideologues, men or women who hold such fixed views that their votes on the high Court are predictable, whether they lean left or right. It is time to get all courts out of politics. Let the political branches make the political decisions. Given the rules of the Senate, if a few members of the Senate insisted that all judicial nominees be non-political or else vowed to block the nomination with a filibuster, thus requiring a super-majority to place any political nominee on the Court, it would end the practice of selecting Justices for their ideology rather than their legal acumen and wisdom. But this not likely to happen. There are not a lot of profiles in political courage in the Senate today. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20011101.html