I can understand if you’re just curious about that but I don’t think it matters. The courtroom itself is a set of procedures which aren’t very difficult to understand. His understanding of the law, his ability to be objective, and his understanding of the much wider world outside of the courtroom is more important for a justice. That last part may be the weakness of most of the justices we’ve had in recent times, a lifetime of courtroom experience indicates a lack of depth of experience needed at the supreme court level.
The history of the court disagrees with you.
Starting with John Marshall, (ten year old article, but still factual) a large percentage of SC Justices never sat behind a bench before.
I said worked in a courtroom not behind the bench.
Btw: Richard, if you look you’ll find that basically every NASA leader has either been a scientist/engineer or a pilot/astronaut.
If you mean a SCOTUS justice who was never a judge before, that would be Justice Kagan, appointed in 2010. If you mean a justice with no litigation experience, I think that might have been Justice Breyer.
Well, not quite: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/supreme-court-immigration-obama-dapa.html?_r=0
Breyer was a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals (1st circuit) for 14 years.
You’re so smug and yet so obviously wrong. Here’s a cite from a news source that I assume is right-wing enough for you, but if you want something from Breitbart I’ll try.
I suspect you’re just misremembering because after he worked full-time for three years, he also did work part time as of counsel. But you’ve amusingly transformed your own error into an attack on me and my memory.
Lewis Powell.
Guess I’ll take your word for it, though looking at his bio he was a full partner in a law firm for 25 years. Hard to believe he was never in court.
I think it’s extremely unlikely he’ll ever be nominated. But he’ll be put on every Democratic president’s short list until he dies, just to make the Republicans sweat when he goes in for his vetting interview at the White House.
He never seven on the court. He was no doubt in court as an attorney.
Ok. But you don’t need to look back at all for someone like that. Kagan was only appointed a few years ago with no experience as a judge and very little court experience. My request was for someone who’d never worked in court at all like Obama.
Obama would be a gawd awful pick for The Supreme Court. He would never be confirmed. He knows it and would never accept. Hillary knows and would never nominate him.
He has been a distinguished politician and statesman, but you would be hard-pressed to call him a distinguished lawyer*. And even if he WAS, he would still never be confirmed. Clinton’s nominees are going to have to be exceptionally qualified and squeaky-fucking-clean to have even a hope of being confirmed.
*[sub]I’m certain he could have been, but he chose to go into public service[/sub]
Are you asserting that Obama literally never went into a courtroom as an attorney?
That’s hard to fathom. He billed something like 3,000+ hours over three years. Hard to imagine he wasn’t in court once, even if it was just second-chairing a motion.
ETA: And why would that matter? Drafting motions in the office is much more relevant to being a Supreme Court Justice than trial practice.
Yes, I am saying that he didn’t work in court and most certainly never ran a court case. If you have some info to the contrary please share.
The information to the contrary is that it would be extraordinary for an associate in a small firm to work there for three years without ever stepping foot in court. According to this Wikipedia article, he did an oral argument before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a big deal for an associate), which is the epitome of in-court experience that would be relevant to being a judge.
It would not be odd for him never to have taken the lead on a case, though even that appears not to be true based on that article.
“and one involved, in the only case Obama orally argued,”
Ok, so he was an actual participant in court. Once, in the 3 yr full time 3 year part time employment. Thanks.
Well, no, this doesn’t actually show that he only participated in court once. It shows that he only argued one of the four cases before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals–something many Chicago lawyers will never do. In all likelihood, he appeared in lower courts more often since he was named counsel in several cases.
So how would you compare Obama’s court experience with Kagan, for example.
Kagan’s experience is clearly more relevant. She was Solicitor General. But she was only there for 15 months. So we’re not talking about orders of magnitude of difference. More like the difference between someone who played for a champion NCAA team and someone who played a full season of NBA ball.
In any event, courtroom experience is as tangential to judging as experience as a policymaker. Experience as a judge is clearly more relevant than anything else. But after that, a lot of this other stuff is about equally relevant, IMO.
Well, I personally think experience as an elected politician is almost the opposite of relevant.