Might any Prez candidate pledge to put a criminal defense attorney on the Supreme Court?
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday pledged that if elected president, his first Supreme Court nominee would not be a Harvard Law or Yale Law School graduate. “I think you can be pretty sure of that fact,” he promised radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
In an interview with Hewitt, Christie argued that Americans were tired of the “education establishment” and implied that success was not limited to those who hold an Ivy League education. Five of the current Supreme Court justices are Harvard Law graduates, while three are Yale graduates. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg received her law degree from Columbia Law School.
The governor mentioned that his ideal U.S. Supreme Court appointees would come from various backgrounds and would know that their rulings affect “real people’s” lives every day. “You need folks who have real life experiences, who have had real struggles, and who have made a difference in their communities in ways that are different than just going to an Ivy League school.”
My first reaction to these comments was to find remarkable how similar candidate Christie’s comments about selecting judges are to Prez Obama’s (often criticized) comments about the importance of judges having “a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people” and having “that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles.”
Upon second thought, though, I came to realize that what is really lacking on the Supreme Court are jurists with experience as criminal defense attorneys. Most notably, the last four appointed Supreme Court Justices all had experience as prosecutors and/or members of the US Department of Justice. (In reverse order, Justice Kagan has been US Solicitor General, Justice Sotomayor had been a NY state prosecutor, Justice Alito had been a US Attorney for New Jersey, and Chief Justice Roberts had been a senior official in the Justice Department.)
Of course, despite their Ivy League degrees and some similar resume lines, I think all the current Justices, thanks in part to significant time in a variety of professional roles other than just as a government lawyer, did come onto the Court with some diverse “real life experiences” and “real struggles.” Still, I think candidate Christie is making a reasonable pith for greater educational (and personal and professional?) diversity on the Supreme Court. And especially now that criminal justice reform is a hot-topic on the campaign trail, it is now at least possible to imagine that a future President would seriously consider nominating for the Supreme Court somebody with a background in criminal defense.