I completely forgot to say something regarding experience from the bench. To illustrate my feelings, I remember an argument being made about how under Reagan (and don’t quote me on the numbers), the US Navy had something like 600 ships. By the time Clinton had been president for a few years, the number was down to something like 400. Oh, the horror! Clinton has decimated the navy!! But, what if it could be shown that the US only needs 400 ships? In that case, the story is much different. Instead of decimating the navy, Clinton “pared” it down to a lean, mean fighting force, saved the US loads of $$$, and we still had all the navy defense we need.
Going by this example, who’s to say that Barrett’s experience isn’t more than enough to qualify her for the job? Who set’s the standard of what is enough, and what is inadequate? I don’t imagine there is any way to judge the “quality” of SCOTUS justices over the years based on what bench experience they had. But if there were, would it necessarily show Barrett hasn’t had enough experience?
BTW I don’t think the Navy ever had 600 ships but they were trying to get there for a while. 490 is the number now counting reserve ships. another 90 are in planning or construction. Most of those 90 will replace existing ships that are retired so the total probably stays around 490.
Personally I think that since there are thousands of people with some kind of legal background and 9 slots to fill, I would prefer someone to pass all my tests - experience as a judge, ideological agreement and no major ethical issues. I would rather never appoint someone like Kagan - I’d rather someone with judicial experience in addition to agreeing with me ideologically. I have to admit that if I was a Dem senator I would confirm Kagan because going along with the party increases the chance of getting someone with her ideology on the bench as opposed to splitting it.
The thing I wonder is that if you don’t think there’s any specific experience you’re looking for to qualify a justice, and they don’t need to be in ideological agreement, what are your criteria? Is it just as long as party leadership wants you to do something you should do it? That’s a defensible position, but it makes it pretty unimportant to look at Murkowski as a political figure. If she’s just a number in the tally on the Republican side and we don’t need to spend any effort looking into her statements and should just view her as an extension of McConnell.
Sure, makes perfect sense to me. Decide what you think the tests should be, and find someone who passes them all with flying colors. To reiterate though, I don’t feel qualified to say if 1,800 pages of decisions is enough. But to state the obvious, if the standard is 50,000 pages, Barrett isn’t qualified as far as this test is concerned, but if it’s 500 she is. My argument is simply that there is precedent based on judicial experience of other justices to say that Barrett is qualified, given that those justices named by Sam Stone and myself had none.
Kagan also had minimal experience as a litigator. She was briefly an assistant White House counsel then spent the rest of her career in academia, before one year as Solicitor General. But nobody complained about her qualifications, because like Barrett, she was qualified.
Complain about Barrett’s personal views or McConnell’s hypocrisy all you want. I certainly will. But making arguments about her qualifications weakens the real arguments.
Not at all, since it is normal to have some. But yes- not everyone had- they instead had decades of other experience.
Since there is no Constitutional requirement for SCOTUS, technically any adult is thereby “qualified”, so simply saying someone is legally qualified is meaningless.
Barrett simply doesnt have the kind of resume one would expect.
She was never appointed to the Circuit Court. She went right from academia to the Court of Appeals in 2017. As I said, she was a member of the Federalist Society, and Trump has used their membership rolls to fill a number of judicial slots. She was not on his 2016 list of SCOTUS candidates, probably because she’d had zero courtroom experience of any kind, I suspect the appointment to the COA was to preempt criticism that she was unqualified.
It’s interesting that questioning Murkowski’s vote on Barret ignores her (effectively) nay vote on Kavenaugh. If she is such a Trumpinista then explain that vote.
There are three fundamental differences here. The first is that this isn’t months before the election, it’s during the election. The second was that at the time the Republicans did it, the “McConnell precedent” wasn’t an established fact, it is now. The third is that Garland was a choice calculated to be palatable for Republicans, an older centrist. Whereas ACB is an “in your face” choice.
I don’t care if it’s during the election. It is still a made up rule. I suppose an argument could be made that if the Republicans did what they did, then Democrats can use that as an excuse. IMO though, it’s still bullshit. The palatable-ness is not relevant to this.
ETA: I do want to make it clear that if the Dems think it’s better to wait, surely they have the right to make a case for why the nomination is wrong. But they can’t just say, the American people should have a say in this, just because, let’s face it, they don’t like the nominee. Trump is within his Constitutionally given rights to do this, the American people had their say when Trump was elected, and the Dems just have to live with it.
Yes. FTR, I’m not doing that thing that right-wing cable does where they pretend that the voters are some monolithic block that all wanted him as president. More correctly, I should have said, not enough of the American people voted for Clinton, and now they have to live with it (and the rest of us ).
So you’re OK with one side making up a rule to their own advantage, then flagrantly breaking that rule when it favors them, and you expect the other side to do absolutely nothing about it, and to not even be upset about it.
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