Consumer Law

Poll About Supreme Court Nominee Released

By Brian Wolfman

This story reviews a Washington Post-ABC News poll that shows that a majority of the public thinks prior judicial experience is the single most important qualification for appointment to the Supreme Court. That's understandable, don't you think?  After all, judging and all that goes with it -- like most things -- is probably something that one gets better at with experience. I found the poll's results interesting because recently some politicians have decried the concentration of former appellate judges on the Supreme Court and want one of their own to be the next nominee.

My opinion doesn't matter, but here it is anyway: I'm not against nominating for the Supreme Court a politician (or someone else) with little or no experience on the bench, but the notion that a non-judge will automatically (or even more likely) bring an understanding of the lives of "ordinary Americans" strikes me as strange. Some of the current members of the Supreme Court -- all of whom were federal appellate judges before they were Supreme Court Justices -- tend to vote more often for the consumer or the employee, and some don't.  And it's safe to say that the two Justices who (I believe) spent a higher percentage of their legal careers in government or the private sector than their colleagues -- Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas -- are not Justices whom most readers of this blog would say tend to see things from the consumer's or the employee's perspective.  On the other hand, consumer and employee advocates see Justice Ginsburg (who served 13 years on the federal appellate bench before assuming her current position and was a law professor for 17 years before that) as more likely than either Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Thomas to understand a case from the consumer's or the employee's perspective.

Again, I'm not against a Justice who has a background in politics or otherwise spent most or all of her career in the "real" world. And I am interested in what people have done in their legal lives before becoming judges. Justice Ginsburg was a pioneering women's rights advocate. And we know about Justice Thurgood Marshall's background before becoming a judge and Justice.  And we also know that nearly zero percent of the current federal bench spent significant amounts of their careers as legal services lawyers or public defenders or lawyers for non-profit organizations. The lack of legal diversity on the bench may matter a lot. But is it important to get a Supreme Court justice who doesn't have judicial experience? I doubt it.

The Washington-Post ABC poll is here (see questions 16 through 20).

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on April 30, 2010 (boomark / email).