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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Robert Schlesinger
We live in an age of generalization. The Internet has made everyone their own travel agent, investment banker, weather forecaster. You can use it to self-diagnose health problems. Don't like the news? You can be your own editor, writer, and pundit. Specialization and professionalization are so last century.
But one area of public life has become the realm of a narrower and narrower group.
The current court is striking in its uniformity of professional experience. All nine justices were elevated from the federal appeals court, a historical first.
Perhaps most strikingly, for the first time in U.S. history, none of the high court's members has ever had any kind of federal, state, or local legislative experience, or even run for office.
There used to be numerous routes to the big bench. Cabinet members like Robert Jackson (attorney general before serving as chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg) donned the black robes, as did law professors like Felix Frankfurter, and private practice lawyers like Louis Brandeis, nicknamed "the people's attorney" for his habit of taking on public interest cases. There were former senators like Hugo Black, former governors like Earl Warren, and even one former president, William Howard Taft. In all, 91 of the country's 111 justices have had state or federal political experience, though none since former Arizona state Senate Majority Leader Sandra Day O'Connor retired.
Dwight Eisenhower started the trend toward relying on appellate justices after he became disenchanted with Warren, his first nominee, says
That's helpful for presidents because since Robert Bork's failed 1987 confirmation, nominees have adopted a bland dialect of judicialese, avoiding controversial pronouncements while insisting that they bring no ideology to their decisions. As every post-Bork nominee has been a federal appeals judge, they have cloaked themselves in the public perception that they are, in Chief Justice Roberts's memorable phrase, merely umpires calling balls and strikes.
Hence the appellate appeal to a president: a nominee who has already been through
But the image of
One way to start stemming that tide is bringing professional diversity back, and with it real world experience. O'Connor, for example, "certainly brought a sense and an understanding of where the public was and how far the court could move away from that," says Epstein.
In January's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commissionthe court's five conservative justices found that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited sums of their money on political ads without fear that it could have a detrimental effect on politics. Might it not have helped to have someone with actual political experience considering the case?
A
A few non-judges have reportedly made Obama's short list, including Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's name surfaced but was quickly shot down, a trial balloon that missed perhaps the best choice in terms of political skills, smarts, and, well, spectacle. But I suppose Justice William J. Clinton is too much to hope for.
Available at Amazon.com:
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
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Obama Should Not Appoint Another Appeals Judge to Supreme Court | Paul Bedard
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