I’m actually 100 percent positive that were Oprah on the Supreme Court she would do a good job. In a lot of ways, it’s just not that difficult a job. You need a reasonably intelligent, public-spirited individual who’s aware of their own limits and does a good job of hiring clerks. To be a truly great justice requires more than that, but it’s not as if putting a TV personality on the court would lead to her making “wacky judicial bloopers” or something. The difficult, controversial cases that come before the Supreme Court are precisely the cases where the answer isn’t in your bar exam study book.
This is absolutely foolish. "...it's just not that difficult a [sic] job." That's crazy! Matt should take a constitutional law class: in fact I can recommend to him a great textbook.
The sad thing is that just being a Supreme Court justice is really quite hard. But being a halfway decent justice takes an encyclopedic knowledge of the law and an incredibly sharp mind. So to state the obvious Oprah is not up to the task at all. Plus she would probably make .00001% of what she earns now, or even less. Plus the robes definitely make you look like 50 pounds heavier so she would probably never go for it anyway...
I had a conversation with a very smart attorney recently (my dad) about the oft-intriguing concept of appointing a non-judge to the court (which used to be the case more often than not in the days of yore, for many reasons). He seemed to think, and I agree, that the increasing level of complexity that so many new cases demand would make a lack of substantial judicial experience difficult to reconcile. Yes, judges may be "closed-off" from certain aspects of policy debate, or "real-life" (not sure about the legitimacy of that claim) that others could potentially bring to the table, but not having a judicial background is a real cost that needs to be thoroughly considered. And nominating a Justice without a J.D. is absolutely unthinkable.
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I think this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/us/politics/17conserve.html?_r=1&hp) demonstrates to what extent conservatives are sinking themselves, as I think we discussed previously. They plan to attack any Supreme Court nominee by Obama on some social and cultural point which has no bearing to the future of our country or the welfare of our people whatsoever, such as abortion and homosexual marriage. It should be well-ingrained within the national consciousness now that these issues are manufactured to deter and distract. It's not an abstract phenomenon whatsoever. It's a calculated strategy. What's worse, conservatives are on the terminally wrong side of every single one of these issues. Why can't movement conservatism just die already? I prefer a quick death to this slow and agonizing one...
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