# Do Supreme Court Nominee's have to be judges? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 14, 2010, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006 "2010-04-14T01:27:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/1 "2010-04-14T01:27:58Z")
Or are lawyers good enough? Not that he would, but could he put forward, say, Hillary? Or Bill? I understand that putting them forward is no guarantee they’d get confirmed. I’m curious is all. Oh, and not an American, FYI. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/2 "2010-04-14T01:40:00Z")
No. They don’t even have to be lawyers. They could even theoretically be too young to vote. The Constitution does not list anything as required to qualify for Supreme Court Justice. In practice, they are almost always lawyers and very often judges, but if Obama wanted to appoint you to the Supreme Court (and the Senate agrees), you could be sworn in for the next court term. ---
**Author:** ![Neptunian\_Slug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce7236/32.png) [@Neptunian\_Slug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neptunian_Slug)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/3 "2010-04-14T01:44:26Z")
Technically you don’t even have to be a lawyer. No non-lawyers have every been appointed to the best of my knowledge, but there is no constitutional prohibition on appointing any old schmoe, even me. The President just has to convince the Senate to confirm me. A number of well known justices were not judges prior to their appointment including Chief Justice Earl Warren. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/4 "2010-04-14T02:24:12Z")
[Here’s a discussion of non-judge justices](http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1007/p01s03-usju.html)back when George W. Bush nominated Harriet Meirs. And FWIW Hillary’s name was mentioned as a potential justice more than once between the time she dropped out of the presidential race and before Obama named her Sec. of State. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/5 "2010-04-14T02:51:08Z")
Clarence Thomas spent most of his career as a bureaucrat at the Dept of Education and then Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He had one year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals before getting nominated for the Supreme Court. > **[Clarence Thomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas)** > > Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Since Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022, he is also the Court's oldest mem... Growing up and taking high school civics, I thought only the greatest legal minds went to the Supreme Court. Legendary figures like Thurgood Marshall come to mind. He argued some of the most important civil rights cases at the Supreme Court. 20 years as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. His greatest legal victory came in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. > **[Thurgood Marshall - Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court](https://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/tmarsh.htm)** > > Get all the information you need at first hand. Self reviewed and self written. Real experts report on arlingtoncemetery.net Unfortunately, Thurgood Marshall was the exception. Most Supreme Court justices don’t have that kind of credentials. Thank goodness most of them have much more experience than Clarence Thomas. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/6 "2010-04-14T03:12:08Z")
Heck, I don’t even think they’re required to be an American citizen. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/7 "2010-04-14T03:26:09Z")
Hugo Black’s sole judicial experience before becoming Associate Justice was as Police Court Justice in Birmingham AL, 1911-12. He practiced law from 1906-11, 1912-14. and 1919-26. (He also served as Prosecuting Attorney, the D.A. equivalent) Salmon P. Chase practiced law from 1829-49 but never sat on the bench before becoming Chief Justice. Earl Warren practiced law 1914-17 and 1919-25, also serving as prosecutor, but never as judge. Byron White, the only major league professional athlete to sit on SCOTUS, practiced law between 1947 and 1960, but never served as a judge before his SCOTUS appointment. Felix Frankfurter practiced law only for a few months in 1906, serving thereafter as assistant to U.S. Attorney Henry Stinson (who went on to serve in Cabinet offices for Presidents from Taft to Truman). A founder of the ACLU, Frankfurter taught at Harvard Law until named Associate Justice by FDR. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/8 "2010-04-14T03:55:02Z")
Sandra Day O’Connor was a a state senator in Arizona. In 1973, she was elected majority leader in the state senate. She also had a lot of experience as an attorney and on the Arizona Court of Appeals. > [@](#): > > During her time in the Arizona state government, she served in all three of its branches. > **[Sandra Day O'Connor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor)** > > Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O'Connor was the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. A moderate conservative, she was considered a swing vote. Before O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was an Arizona state judge and earlier an elected legislator in Arizona, serving as O'... I’ve always thought her wide ranging background made her one of the better Supreme Court justices in recent times. ---
**Author:** ![Jormungandr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@Jormungandr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jormungandr)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/9 "2010-04-14T05:05:26Z")
Chief Justice John Marshall practiced law, but was never a judge. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, the Recorder of the Richmond City Hustings Court, a Congressman and Secretary of State under John Adams before becoming Chief Justice ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/10 "2010-04-14T05:58:01Z")
Chief Justice Roberts had a long career as a lawyer but he had only served as a judge for two years when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-supreme-court-nominees-have-to-be-judges/536006/11 "2010-04-14T10:17:56Z")
[John Jay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay), the first Chief Justice, was never a judge before George Washington appointed him to the Court. Reviewing the careers of the other 5 initial appointees to the Court, [James Wilson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson) also had no previous experience as a judge.