Time once again for the biggest beauty pageant America promotes. Cameras have come back to the U.S. Senate chamber and the popularity parade is well underway. As Senators examine Judge Roberts for Chief Justice this week, they will be mugging for the camera and asking tough sounding questions, framing for their constituencies the issues they ran on.

And who can blame the Senators? Hearings are the only times they get to put their faces out there, to get some national name recognition. Come late 2007 we will see the same names come up on the primaries of both parties. Hearings perform an important publicity function.

Unfortunately, the hearings will not perform the function we need them to. The Senators’ questions this week will be partisan, parochial, and fixed on a rear view perspective. Will Roberts uphold Roe? Will Roberts defend property? What about privacy? Meanwhile Roberts is being examined for a post where he will shape the Court for the next thirty years.

Yesterday’s cases matter only if they come up for review, and how often does SCOTUS ever take up issues overturning its own precedents? But every new case bubbling up through the lower courts today has potential for either eroding or edifying the influence of the Constitution of the United States. Will the new Chief Justice read the Constitution broadly or narrowly? Will we have an originalist, a revisionist, or a pragmatist?

These are the important questions, but they don’t play well to the cameras. They don’t incite heated discussions on the Sunday shows. And important as they are, they won’t be asked this week.