WASHINGTON — A few hours before keeping an appointment here, I noticed a long line of folks assembling for what I assumed were tours of the U.S. Capitol.

Not quite.

For starters, most were too well-dressed to be summer tourists. A Capitol guard told me the city-block-long line consisted of people who wanted to sit in the background during televised Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

“Most just want to be on TV,” the guard sighed, shaking his head.

Yes, and then some wanted to let the world know how they felt about Sotomayor — and did so. Several times during the hearings, individuals suddenly arose from the crowd of spectators behind Sotomayor and mounted outbursts about abortion before being ejected.

A few blocks away, I saw a woman get into a screaming match with anti-abortion protesters waving placards urging Republican senators to line up against Sotomayor. The woman later explained to me her reasoning for supporting Sotomayor, as well as the details behind her abortion.

More than I wanted to know — really.

Such emotional scenes, I’m told, seldom accompany the workaday business on Capitol Hill. But Supreme Court appointments occur about as often as solar eclipses. So much these days seems to ride on putting somebody on the highest court for life.

Which I’ve never quite understood.

Now, I don’t cotton to those folks who think we need term limits for lawmakers and governors. If a majority of voters want to keep electing the same person to office, then they should have that right.

And if enough voters can’t remove someone from office through the polls, then they should bow to the will of the majority and resolve to work all the harder to defeat that candidate in the next election.

But the idea of placing someone on the high court — unelected, to boot — till he or she draws his or her very last breath or opts to retire has never made much sense. Even Thomas Jefferson came to regret Article III of the Constitution during his tumultuous presidency.

“A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing,” Jefferson wrote after tangling with U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall, one of the greatest feuds of American history. “But independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a Republican government.”

Marshall not only outlived long-lived Jefferson but Marshall’s own political party, the Federalists.

Jefferson wasn’t the first to question life terms for Supreme Court justices, nor the last.

Which is probably why people feel so anxious about any addition to the nine-member Supreme Court these days — and why, given our nation’s polarized electorate, Senate confirmation hearings have evolved into high theater, complete with unruly protesters and long addresses by windbags masquerading as senators.

None of the hearings is very satisfying, and certainly not in line with what the Founding Fathers envisioned. Confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominees didn’t even come into being until 1925.

What did we get this time? Poor questions, Southern charm and artful dodging. Possibly the worst questions came from Al Franken, pressing Sotomayor to name the sole episode won by prosecutor Hamilton Burger on TV’s “Perry Mason.”

Just as infuriating: Sotomayor’s artful dancing around questions and politely declining to reveal her judicial philosophy and view of the U.S. Constitution because she might have to rule on it if confirmed. Yes, it’s an utterly absurd defense.

Sadly, it’s also routinely embraced by Republican and Democratic nominees alike.

Result: Long hearings in which we’re reduced to seeing if senators can provoke the court nominee or spill over into public outrage themselves. Nominees are judged by how skillfully they maneuver out of questions of dubious relevance.

In the end, we the people learn next to nothing of those legal minds who would sit on the highest court in the land for the remainder of their lives, passing judgment on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.