Our nation’s capital has become obsessed with the politics of judicial confirmations because, unlike much of what happens in Washington these days, who sits on the federal bench really matters.

After all, only the federal courts can overrule the president or Congress – ironic because the Founding Fathers saw the judiciary as by far the weakest of the three branches of government they created.

In fact, other than the election of a president, no other single political battle carries more payoff in terms of shaping the future of the United States than the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice.

Putting a favored nominee on the U.S. Supreme Court – or keeping an unfavored one off – is more important than electing a handful of U.S. senators or double that number of U.S. House members.

And battles over the seats on the U.S. Courts of Appeals cumulatively are almost as important. Those judges handle the bulk of the major appeals in federal cases, and most Supreme Court justices are elevated from those panels.

To Democrats, who have seen their once-ruling coalition disintegrate over the past decades, judges have become their court of last resort to protect policies they can no longer defend at the ballot box.

For Republicans, the courts have become the arena where they see the popular will being subverted by judges with lifetime appointments who were seated when the Democrats held the levers of power.

That is why the acrimony over President Bush’s appeals-court nominees is dominating everything else in Washington. And this is just the warm-up act for the battle over Supreme Court nominees that is virtually certain to take place this summer, when at least one vacancy is expected.

The notion that judges are apolitical is only slightly more believable than the existence of the tooth fairy. That doesn’t mean that Democratic or Republican judges dispense different justice.

On most matters – almost all criminal cases and civil litigation – a judge’s political views and values have little influence on his or her decisions. Yet one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice the rise of cases in which the courts have been asked to decide political matters.

These are often questions that were once settled by state legislatures or Congress.

But in this litigation-crazy society, the losing side in recent years – generally but not always Democrats and their allies – has sought to get the courts to create laws, through their decisions, that the politicians have not been willing to approve.

Gay marriage is the most recent example of judges finding rights that lawmakers never created and, in many cases, consciously voted against. But there are many more.

Legalized abortion was the product of a Supreme Court that followed many losing legislative battles around the country, and in the years since Roe v. Wade, courts have often tossed out abortion restrictions approved by lawmakers.

Then there are profoundly political questions such as campaign finance and congressional redistricting, in which judges have told the politicians the laws they passed were unacceptable. Amazing as it might seem to the framers of the Constitution, judges now are even asked to pass judgment on federal budget cuts and foreign-policy matters.

The decision earlier this month by a federal judge in Nebraska to throw out a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is a good example of this dynamic.

The measure passed with a 70 percent majority among Nebraska voters, who have a strong GOP tilt. The judge, Joseph Bataillon, who is also a strong death-penalty opponent, is a former chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

And, of course, there was the 2000 election. The Florida Supreme Court, with a heavy majority of Democratic appointees, ordered a recount that might have made Al Gore president. But a U.S. Supreme Court, with a slight Republican-appointed majority, disagreed and ended the recount.

All of which is not to excuse the lack of partisanship and the hysteria sweeping our nation’s capital on this issue. Party loyalty and ideology have overwhelmed reason and responsibility to the country.

Yet, as unseemly as this spectacle appears, this is still democracy at work. In many other countries, when the stakes are so high, the losers don’t live to fight another day.

They get shot.

I like our way better.