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Should Supreme Court justices have had experience being a judge at some point?

Should Supreme Court Justices have had experience as judges?

  • Total voters
    64
Groucho said:
I understand and agree. My post was in response to this:

Originally Posted by winston53660
14th Amendment, one must be born in the US to have Constitutional rights.

This is blatantly false.
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Yeah you are right I should have put persons and naturalized in there. But since it was a joke about a ham sandwich I went to quickly.
 
While I voted for option 1, but after further thought option 2 seems the better one.

Personally, I would much rather that a judge on the SCOTUS had previous judge experiance, but it is obviously not vital, as the various info bits posted show.

As long as they have SOME legal knowledge...
 
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hazlnut said:
Chief Justices

John Jay..............................Governor
John Rutledge......................Governor
Oliver Ellsworth....................Senator
John Marshall.......................Secretary of State
Roger Taney.........................Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Attorney General
Salmon Chase......................Secretary of the Treasury, Governor
Morrison Waite.....................Lawyer
Melville Fuller.......................Representative
Edward White.......................Lawyer
William Howard Taft..............U.S. President
Charles Hughes....................Secretary of State
Harlan Stone........................Attorney General
Fred Vinson..........................Secretary of the Treasury
Earl Warren..........................Governor


Associate Justices

William Cushing...................Member, Continental Congress
James Wilson......................Member, Continental Congress
William Paterson..................Governor
Samuel Chase.....................Member, Maryland General Assembly; Continental Congress
Bushrod Washington............Lawyer
William Johnson..................Representative, S.C. House
Henry B. Livingston.............Military
Gabriel Duvall.....................Representative
Joseph Story.......................Representative
Smith Thompson.................Secretary of the Navy
John McLean.......................Unknown
Henry Baldwin....................Representative
James M. Wayne.................Mayor, Representative
Philip P. Barbour..................Representative
John McKinley.....................Senator, Representative
Levi Woodbury....................Governor, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of the Navy
Benjamin Curtis..................Lawyer
John Campbell....................Lawyer
Nathan Clifford....................Attorney General
Noah Swayne......................Member, Ohio Legislature, U.S. Attorney
Samuel Miller......................Lawyer
David Davis........................Senator
Joseph Bradley....................Lawyer
John M. Harlan (I)...............Kentucky Attorney General
Stanley Matthews................U.S. Attorney, Military
Horace Gray........................Lawyer
Lucius Lamar.......................Member, Georgia House, Secretary of the Interior
George Shiras, Jr.................Lawyer
Howell Jackson....................Member, Tennessee House
Edward D. White..................Lawyer
William Henry Moody............Attorney General
Mahlon Pitney.....................Congress (office unspecified)
James McReynolds...............Attorney General
Louis Brandeis.....................Lawyer
George Sutherland...............Congress (office unspecified)
Pierce Butler.......................Lawyer
Edward Sanford...................Attorney General
Owen Roberts......................Assistant District Attorney
Hugo L. Black......................Senator
Stanley Forman Reed...........Solicitor General
Felix Frankfurter..................Lawyer
William O. Douglas...............Law Professor, Chairman of SEC
Frank Murphy......................Mayor, Governor, Attorney General
James Francis Byrnes...........Secretary of State
Robert H. Jackson................Attorney General
Harold Hitz Burton................Senator
Tom Clark...........................Attorney General
John M. Harlan (II)..............Lawyer
Arthur J. Goldberg...............Secretary of Labor
Abe Fortas..........................President and Chairman of the SEC
Thurgood Marshall...............Lawyer
Lewis F. Powell....................Lawyer

Let's see, two of the most influential legal minds of the 20th century were not judges before being appointed to the court.

Hmmmm.... I guess we can flush that GOP talking point down the toilet.
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First, I assume you're not actually saying that Warren was one of the most influential minds of the 20th century, because nobody who actually follows the court (liberal or conservative) would say that he was anything other than an abject failure as a CJ. If you actually read the important decisions of his era, you'll see that it was not the Warren court, but the Brennan/Douglas/Frankfurter/Black court.

Second, yes, we're all aware that historically, most of the members of the Supreme Court were appointed directly out of political positions. That's because historically, most of the lower federal courts were considered to be unprestigious compared to political positions. As a result, the best legal minds went into politics.

Nowadays, that is not at all the case. Politics is quite unprestigious compared to legal positions, such as USA. SG, OLC, or Dist. Ct. Judge. As a result, most of the Justices in the modern era have come from the Art. III courts. Citing to Justices from the 1800s as proof that modern Justices should come from private practice is either disingenuous or uninformed.

winston53660 said:
14th Amendment, one must be born in the US to have Constitutional rights.
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That's not what the 14th says.

Groucho said:
Is there a more updated version of that list? It ends 50 years ago!
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Exactly.
 
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RightinNYC said:
First, I assume you're not actually saying that Warren was one of the most influential minds of the 20th century, because nobody who actually follows the court (liberal or conservative) would say that he was anything other than an abject failure as a CJ.
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Many of us who actually went to law school are taught the exact opposite.

RightinNYC said:
If you actually read the important decisions of his era, you'll see that it was not the Warren court, but the Brennan/Douglas/Frankfurter/Black court.
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Many were, but not all. Warren gets credit for Brown v. Board of Education if nothing else, and by using his skills to get it a unanimous decision.
 
LiberalAvenger said:
Translation please.:confused:
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The point of ther post I responded to is that people w/o judicial experience have been placed on the court in the past.

So what? How does that negate argument that SCotUS justices -should- have judicial experience?
 
Groucho said:
Many of us who actually went to law school are taught the exact opposite.

Many were, but not all. Warren gets credit for Brown v. Board of Education if nothing else, and by using his skills to get it a unanimous decision.
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Despite being the Chief Justice and having the ability to assign decisions, Warren was responsible for very few of the important decisions in his time. If you look at most of the fractious decisions of the era, they're authored by Douglas/Frankfurter/Black. If you look at the most famous and enduring dissents or concurrences, they're authored by Brennan and Powell. Warren has very few opinions that are considered seminal today.

Beyond that, nothing in his record indicates that he was a monumental legal thinker as opposed to simply a consensus builder who happened to be in place at a time of substantial social change. To this day, many law students and lawyers cite judges like Brennan, Black, or Douglas as their "favorite" Justices. I've never heard anyone mention Warren for anything other than being in the right place at the right time.
 
RightinNYC said:
Despite being the Chief Justice and having the ability to assign decisions, Warren was responsible for very few of the important decisions in his time. If you look at most of the fractious decisions of the era, they're authored by Douglas/Frankfurter/Black. If you look at the most famous and enduring dissents or concurrences, they're authored by Brennan and Powell. Warren has very few opinions that are considered seminal today.

Beyond that, nothing in his record indicates that he was a monumental legal thinker as opposed to simply a consensus builder who happened to be in place at a time of substantial social change. To this day, many law students and lawyers cite judges like Brennan, Black, or Douglas as their "favorite" Justices. I've never heard anyone mention Warren for anything other than being in the right place at the right time.
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Well, in some ways I agree. What I give him credit for, as I said earlier, was being a good consensus builder who was able to get unanimous decisions for the most important cases. That can't be overlooked; especially with controversial cases, it is important to have unanimous decisions, because that doesn't give opponents a very strong argument.

I also agree with his view of the Constitution, of course. Still, the point of this thread is whether lack of judicial experience means you will be a bad justice, and I don't think you're arguing that he was bad, are you?
 
I wish I had a similar post from when Bush nominated Harriet Myers. Wondering if the same people who are saying that judicial experience is necessary would have been saying it then.

(I'm sure some would -- after all, she was attacked by the right more than the left, if I recall!)

By the way, I found a chart listing Supreme Court Justices without prior judicial experience. There have been 40, but the last one was Rehnquist, appointed in the 70s.

FindLaw Supreme Court Center: Supreme Court: Justices Without Prior Judicial Experience
 
Groucho said:
Well, in some ways I agree. What I give him credit for, as I said earlier, was being a good consensus builder who was able to get unanimous decisions for the most important cases. That can't be overlooked; especially with controversial cases, it is important to have unanimous decisions, because that doesn't give opponents a very strong argument.

I also agree with his view of the Constitution, of course. Still, the point of this thread is whether lack of judicial experience means you will be a bad justice, and I don't think you're arguing that he was bad, are you?
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Bad in what sense? If Warren had served on the court during a different era, I'm inclined to believe he would have been entirely forgettable. If it weren't for the fact that the court was positioned to make the changes he desired, I doubt he would have done much of note. He wasn't the type to craft scathing dissents that would stand the test of time, nor was he the type to persuade a reluctant majority to come around to his point of view. He was a good justice for his time, but he wasn't exactly breaking new ground.

Either way, none of this has any impact on the question of whether judicial experience is beneficial for a SC justice. I think it would be hard to argue that it's not usually a benefit. Furthermore, I think that citing to the aforementioned list as proof that most justices don't have legal experience is entirely disingenuous, for the reasons I mentioned above.
 
Groucho said:
I wish I had a similar post from when Bush nominated Harriet Myers. Wondering if the same people who are saying that judicial experience is necessary would have been saying it then.

(I'm sure some would -- after all, she was attacked by the right more than the left, if I recall!)

By the way, I found a chart listing Supreme Court Justices without prior judicial experience. There have been 40, but the last one was Rehnquist, appointed in the 70s.

FindLaw Supreme Court Center: Supreme Court: Justices Without Prior Judicial Experience
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You can search the forum for threads about Miers. If I recall correctly, things were mostly switched on both sides, as you might expect.
 
Groucho said:
Ah, didn't realize the forums had been here that long.
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Yup, the database should go back to mid-04, though there are a few month-long periods that aren't indexed for no apparent reason.
 
To those who said YES that nominees should have experience as a judge, I ask:

How much?

A day?

A year?

19 Months - Clarence Thomas

2 Years - John G. Roberts

13 Years - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

17 Years - Sonia Sotomayor

The anti-Obama crowd is too funny.
 
hazlnut said:
To those who said YES that nominees should have experience as a judge, I ask:

How much?

A day?

A year?

19 Months - Clarence Thomas

2 Years - John G. Roberts

13 Years - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

17 Years - Sonia Sotomayor

The anti-Obama crowd is too funny.
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Given the role of the SC, any amount of time at the CoA level is useful in understanding the impact and application of the SC's decisions.

I don't think anyone is saying that the length of time one has served on the federal bench is necessarily correlated with the quality of the eventual justice, nor do I think any criticism of Kagan's lack of judicial experience is necessarily an outgrowth of "anti-Obama" sentiment.
 
I voted yes. This is the same reason I was against Harriet Meiers, when Bush nominated her.

IMHO, there is no experience like prior judicial experience. Therefore, I am not please with Obama's choice of Kagan, and I don't believe that it was the best choice.
 
Ockham said:
Oh, I thought "she" was a man in drag. She is really a she - by birth?
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one commentator I heard today called her Dick morris in pantyhose!

judicial experience is not all that important for USSC justices

It actually is more important for trial court judges who have to make instantaneous rulings on objections
 
Why does it seem like it's mostly liberal women that are butt ugly and conservative women are pretty hot? :mrgreen:
 
Mellie said:
Why does it seem like it's mostly liberal women that are butt ugly and conservative women are pretty hot? :mrgreen:
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Because liberals judge people not on how they look, so ugly liberals can get positions of power that ugly conservatives can't? :mrgreen:
 
danarhea said:
I voted yes. This is the same reason I was against Harriet Meiers, when Bush nominated her.

IMHO, there is no experience like prior judicial experience. Therefore, I am not please with Obama's choice of Kagan, and I don't believe that it was the best choice.
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Was expecting Diane Wood myself. (not endorsing her, just who i thought he would nominate.)

But suspect Ginsberg will be "announcing" soon. And the WH prolly knows that too. :) My next guess/suspicion is that Wood will be coming soon. And nominating Kagan first was just the politically calculated best sequence.



.
 
hazlnut said:
To those who said YES that nominees should have experience as a judge, I ask:

How much?

A day?

A year?

19 Months - Clarence Thomas

2 Years - John G. Roberts

13 Years - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

17 Years - Sonia Sotomayor

The anti-Obama crowd is too funny.
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Minimum of 1 year on the bench. Preferable is 2+
 
I really believe that Obama could have picked a better looking lesbian.
 
Groucho said:
Because liberals judge people not on how they look, so ugly liberals can get positions of power that ugly conservatives can't? :mrgreen:
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really? its libs who pick people based on how they look. Why was Sotomayor picked by Obama?

Liberal diversity

a lesbian socialist
a hispanic socialist
a gay black male socialist
a blond handicapped socialist
a midget socialist

ie people who look different but all think exactly the same
 
Yeah, yeah, right. :roll:

Conservatives NEVER choose people based on what they look like. It's just pure coincidence that 99% of all the people they choose are white, and why only good looking women get promoted and get to be on Fox News. Coincidence, I tells ya!
 
TurtleDude said:
why-where experience is most needed is at the trial level
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I disagree - While trial level judges certainly need more experience in how to manage a day to day docket and handle actual court appearances, the SC is mostly concerned with how its decisions will be applied by the lower courts. Probably around 25% of the SC's docket is dedicated to fixing the unmanageable tests that earlier SC decisions created for the lower courts. If a Justice has never sat on a lower court, they have no idea how their decisions will be applied and will not appreciate the confusion they can create.
 
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