But Brigham Young University political science professor Richard Davis has a bold plan he believes would solve many of the ills of a conflict-driven process manipulated by interest groups and the news media: Let the people vote.

Davis proposes a constitutional amendment giving citizens a direct role in selecting Supreme Court justices, a process he says is becoming inherently more public.

It would be perhaps the most sweeping change to the federal system of government since the Constitution was amended to provide for direct election of senators in 1913. But it's a discussion that the BYU scholar expects more people to join in the coming months.

"The poisoned environment will definitely affect the next Supreme Court nominee and I think that will cause more to question the nature of the process we have right now," Davis said.

It is widely believed that Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who has been suffering from thyroid cancer, could soon announce he is stepping down at the end of the court's current term later this month, setting the stage for a Supreme Court battle in a bitterly entrenched Senate.

Angry Republicans have threatened to use a "nuclear option" to ban the filibuster after minority Democrats used the stall tactic to block several of President Bush's nominees. A tenuous peace was reached last month by moderate Senators from both parties, but the issue remains explosive. As Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch put it: "It's a truce, not a treaty."

Davis offers several possibilities that he says could fix some of the problems and, to some extent, preserve the Senate's traditional role:

l The president could pick several nominees who would be screened by the Senate and put on the ballot, with the top vote-getter ascending to the bench;

l After the Senate screens a president's nominees, he or she would still have to win a majority of the public's support;

l The public could be asked to vote on a nominee if he or she gets fewer than 60 votes in the Senate, which could encourage the president to seek consensus in his nominations.

Davis also recommends limiting a Supreme Court justice's tenure from a lifetime appointment to 18 years - an idea endorsed by a number of other legal scholars. The term limit would mean regular openings on the bench, lowering the stakes in confirmation battles, since justices couldn't shape the court for three or four decades.

The benefits, Davis argues, would be the democratization of the Supreme Court, taking the power out of the hands of the elite groups - the president, Senate, media and interest groups - that wield it now.

"It's a valuable piece to provoke thinking about this process and how we might improve it. I don't think anybody disagrees that the process is troubled, if not broken," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

There are potential pitfalls, Tobias said. First, it's difficult, since the Constitution is rarely amended. And judicial elections could force justices to stake out positions on specific issues to gain the support and monetary backing of groups with stances on abortion, religious practices, legal reform and other contentious issues.

"I'm not sure that's the best way to select judges," Tobias said. "I don't know that election is a panacea."

Judicial elections are held in most states. Supreme Court justices are elected in 21 states; another 13 have periodic retention elections.

Utah judges face retention elections at the end of their terms - every 10 years for the high court, six years for others - although rarely are the campaigns contentious or the outcomes close.

Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative group involved in judicial fights, said the numerous reform proposals like Davis' are symptoms of a public sentiment that "the judiciary is unaccountable, out-of-control and arrogant."

But he said fixing the current system is the right approach, and elections could come to be seen as a source of, rather than an answer to, corruption.

"They denigrate the judges to a certain degree by making them seem like political actors," he said. "Imagine the campaign financing aspects of that. Do you really want [political action committees] and the Chamber of Commerce and EMILY's List giving to whoever it is?"

Some already question the dollars flowing to state Supreme Court campaigns. According to a November 2004 report by the Brennan Center at New York University Law School, more than $21 million was spent on television advertising in Supreme Court campaigns in 15 states, the highest level ever.

"High spending by candidates means that special interest groups are giving substantial amounts directly to judicial candidates, furthering the impression that justice is for sale," Deborah Goldberg, director of the center's Democracy Program, said at the time.

"It should not be a partisan election," Davis said. "If it were in any way competitive, you would have to have some strict campaign finance regulations to uphold."

Davis recognizes the difficulty in changing a system that has been in place since the birth of the country, but hopes he can spur discussion of the fundamental issues.

"I'm not unrealistic here. What I'm hoping will come out of this is essentially a debate about the process," he said. "What we're debating right now is filibusters and lower court nominations and we'll eventually get to a Supreme Court nomination, but what we really need to be looking at is the whole process itself."