I’d like to echo Nona’s point- get some non-lawyers in the Court. They don’t necessarily have to be non-lawyers, but just like what the discussion has shown, it is very important to have people with different background and experience on the bench at the same time. The discussion up to now focused primarily on where the Justices went to law school. To discover other aspects of these Justices’ life, I did a little wiki research and found that there is one striking similarity between all the current Justices (replacing Stevens with Kagan): they have not been outside of the legal world for one day.

Before them, both Stevens and Rehnquist served in WWII for several years, while O’Connor used to be a state senator. In Stevens’ words, “Somebody was saying that there ought to be at least one person on the Court who had military experience… I have to confess that.” It is ironic that a Court which recognizes diversity as a compelling interest is lacking in diversity itself. Homogeneity raises a red flag.

I am concerned with this problem because in my opinion, there are some things that a pure “jurist” might not be able to do. For example, Earl Warren, the governor-turned Chief Justice, successfully mustered nine votes for Brown. Such a manoeuvring takes way more than the skill to apply legal rules. In the present Court, there are no such people. Aside from being liberal/ conservative, the Justices are not that different. When you have a bunch of equally intelligent people but no leader among them, hardly anything significant can be achieved. No wonder there was some opinion that Obama should nominate himself Justice.

-- WenweiLai - 25 Jun 2010