Posted by Juan Non-Volokh: Must a Justice First Be a Judge? Most (though by no means all) speculation about potential Supreme Court nominees focuses on currently sitting judges -- and federal judges at that. Given the current composition of the Court, this is be unsurprising. Seven of the nine justices were federal judges before they were nominated to the Court, and an eighth was a state court judge. Chief Justice Rehnquist is alone among the current justices in not having been a judge. It was not always this way. Many justices never sat as judges until they arrived on the High Court, including Lewis Powell, Earl Warren, Byron White, Felix Frankfurter, and William Douglas. While there are many fine jurists on the federal bench -- and I would love to see a [1]Chief Justice Roberts -- I hope that President Bush casts a wider net before he settles on his Supreme Court nominees.
References 1. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_11_07.shtml#1099967661 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
