U.S. Supreme Court Needs Justices with Proven Capabilities and Integrity

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was recently asked who he thought President Obama should select to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. In his reply he indicated that the list should not be limited to candidates with experience as judges. Senator Reid also said he preferred someone from the real world and not someone who had spent most of their career among others who wore black robes. Many other democrats have indicated a preference for a candidate who will empathize with disenfranchised Americans and bring a sense of fairness and social justice to the position. Still others think that diversifying the bench by adding a woman, a Hispanic and/or perhaps even an Asian should be an important consideration. We know for sure the appointment will be political, as it always is, and given the president’s political leaning, the nominee is likely to come from the liberal camp.

All of those considerations notwithstanding, isn’t the job of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution of the United States? Shouldn’t a nominee’s proven ability to do that be the starting point for the selection process? I would have thought that a nominee with background as a judge would have a decided advantage for such a job. He didn’t say but I wonder if Mr. Reid would concede that all prospective nominees should at least be lawyers. If recent history has taught us anything it's that we really shouldn’t take anything for granted.

We elected an inexperienced president with an unproven track record. Taking our lead, our new president promptly nominated many individuals for his cabinet that lacked experience and gravitas for their respective positions. However, the nominees that failed their confirmation hearings did so not because of those professional deficiencies, but because they had legal, tax and other skeletons hanging in their closets that caused even the most unassuming among us to question their integrity. Before this year, would anyone have believed that a proven tax cheat would be in charge of the U.S. Treasury, the agency that oversees the IRS? Although unquestionably the most egregious example, it’s only one on a shamefully long list of questionable nominations. Why assume this time will be different? We elected a president who had been barely a senator. It’s certainly plausible that he could appoint a Supreme Court Justice who was barely a lawyer.

Harry Reid ended his interview on the topic saying that he thought that the President’s selection to the Supreme Court would be as good as the men and women he selected for his cabinet. That’s what worries me.