Posted by Orin Kerr:
The Right Experience for a Supreme Court Justice:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_03-2009_05_09.shtml#1241726065
I've been thinking about what kind of experience is helpful for a
Supreme Court nominee. I have come up with the ideal experience the
President should seek.
First, it would be very helpful for the candidate to have a science
background, all the better a Ph.D. After she gets her Ph.D., she
should spend a few years volunteering to help the poor to get a better
sense of poverty in our society. She should then go to law school.
After law school, she should clerk for a magistrate judge, a
bankruptcy judge, a district court judge, a court of appeals judge,
and a Supreme Court Justice. That way, the nominee will have a good
sense of what it's like at all stages of the federal court system.
The candidate should then have considerable practice experience. In
particular, the candidate should spend at least 5 years at a large law
firm, followed by 5 years as a solo practitioner. That way she'll
really understand legal practice. But that practice would be mostly
civil law, and Supreme Court Justices also deal a lot with criminal
law. The candidate should therefore get experience as a state
prosecutor and then experience as a federal prosecutor. After that,
the candidate should obtain experience in criminal defense, by
spending a few years as public defender in the state system and a few
years as a public defender in the federal system.
Of course, at this point the candidate won't have any Supreme Court
experience, and that would be very helpful for a prospective Justice.
So I would want the candidate to spend a few years as an Assistant at
the SG's Office to understand Supreme Court practice. I think it would
also be helpful for the candidate to get experience understanding the
executive branch, so I want the candidate to then spend a few years at
the Office of Legal Counsel and at least a year in the White House
Counsel's office. Experience in Congress is very helpful, too, and a
few years as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee would be an
excellent way to get that.
Next the candidate needs prior judicial experience. The ideal
candidate would have a few years of experience as a state trial judge,
followed by a few years of experience as a state appellate judge. That
way the judge understand law "in the trenches", and also understand
the importance of state courts. Next, the candidate should get
experience as a federal judge, too. Ideally, the candidate would be a
federal trial judge for a few years and a federal court of appeals
judge for a few years.
There's only one more stage at this point: The ideal candidate would
have a sense of the political system. We don't need Justices who are
pointy-headed beancounters; someone with political experience would be
great. In particular, I'd like to see a candidate who served a few
years in the state legislature, followed by a few years in the House
of Representatives and a term or two in the Senate. It would also be
great for the candidate to then have a few Presidential runs and
perhaps end up on a national ticket. A term as President or even just
VP would be ideal, but then that may be asking too much.
At this point the candidate would be about 147 years old, an much of
her relevant experience would be outdated. The science Ph.D. would be
about 120 years past, and the world of legal practice she experienced
as as lawyer would be a century outdated. So I would want her to do it
again, except this time super-quickly, like a month per job or
something, to get a good refresher on things.
By then there will be a magic pill you can take that can make you
any age you want, so we would give her that pill and make our 153 year
old Justice a very youthful 32 years old. And that 32 year-old would
be the perfect Supreme Court nominee.
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