The federal bench needs reforming. No doubt about it. Too many of the robed ones are extremists from both the left and the right. Too many are living in an ivory tower. That’s why the last thing this country needs is a Senate ban on filibusters against judicial nominees.

Right now, it takes 60 votes to get a judge passed by the Senate. In other words, members from both parties must agree before a judge becomes a judge. Still, too many ideologues get elevated to the bench. But you can kiss that rational safeguard goodbye if Republican bomb-throwers like Sen. Rick Santorum, Pa., have their way and get to kill the filibuster, replacing it with a simple majority vote on judicial appointments. Translation: one-party rule — i.e. GOP rule — over the courts.

As things stand, it was a small miracle when this week the Senate confirmed — by a 95-0 vote, no less — New York City’s former corporation counsel, Paul Crotty, for a Southern District judgeship. These days, the polarized Senate rarely gets to a consensus on any of President Bush’s nominees.

But Crotty, says one court expert, “was a fluke. He served in top posts under both a Democratic mayor, Ed Koch, and a Republican mayor, Rudy Giuliani. He had supporters on both sides of the aisle. You’d be lucky to have him as your judge in a case. He knows the law. He’s nonpartisan. And he’s scrupulously fair.”

One-party rule could make such candidates an impossibility. Imagine the possibilities if right-wingers like Santorum held sway. We’d get judges who would overrule the right of public schools to teach Darwin. Judges who’d undo the separation of church and state. And make guns available in public vending machines.

But Santorum should be careful what he wishes for. One day the Dems will retake the Senate and the White House. Suddenly we’ll have judges who’d have parents jailed for spanking their kids. Cops forced to trade their revolvers for nightsticks. And each time the president speaks, C-SPAN would have to run an equal-time rebuttal from Osama bin Laden.

Trashing the filibuster would only make things more partisan. Today, senators typically recommend a candidate for a vacancy in his or her state. The president then nominates off those recommendations. Or picks his own candidate. The Senate then approves the nominee. It’s good theory.

But as Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who wisely recommended Crotty, says, “There are a couple of things that can get in the way. One is ideology. The other is patronage.”

That’s why we often get lemons, like New York Judge Harold Baer, who refused to admit into evidence a carload of drugs in a case because he ruled it’s reasonable to mistrust cops.

The solution, for my court expert, is to “make the parties work together. Create a bipartisan panel for each state that recruits and recommends candidates to the President. That way you’ll get more Crottys and fewer clunkers.”

If only the fools on Capitol Hill would listen.

Richard Schwartz is a columnist for the New York Daily News. His e-mail address is rschwartz@edit.nydailynews.com.