Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

"For the Supreme Court, Younger Isn?t Necessarily Better"

By Douglas A. Berman

A law-school classmate of mine was kind enough to allow me to post here his terrific bloggy op-ed with advice for President Obama as he considers his first Supreme Court nominee. The piece caries the same title as this post and goes a little something like this: The conventional wisdom is that in choosing a successor for Justice David Souter, Barack Obama should rule out anyone over sixty years old. There is a surface logic to this reasoning -- after all, if Clarence Thomas is likely to have a forty-year run on the court, why shouldn?t President-elect Obama want the same fate for his nominees?  But, there are several reasons why, when it comes to Supreme Court justices, younger isn?t necessarily better. First,  the idea of choosing young Supreme Court justices is based in part on the false assumption that Supreme Court justices are likely to step down from the court at random intervals...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 04, 2009 (boomark / email).