Are We the Only Ones Who See a Similarity Here ??
Yeah maybe us picking on Elena Kagan's turkey neck is a bit of the Pot calling the Kettle black, but at least ours is going in the right direction. Perhaps if every picture we ever saw of Kagan wasn't this one, we wouldn't have been so surprised......
When the hell was this from, 1986 ????
Anyway, for those of you who have been reading SC6 for a little while, last year we started a whole little shitstorm in Flotown, when we advised that the Senate not waste too much time in grilling Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Not that she didn't have questions to answer, but because she was a Latina, and giving her trouble would disenfranchise an entire voting block. You would have thought that I said it was OK to put Fidel Castro on SCOTUS - but the Senate decided I was right, and Sotomayor cruised .....
This time, Barack Obama has decided to pick one of his buddies in Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Why? A few reasons.....First, I think with the possibility of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg's health still being an issue, Obama made up his mind on the next one being a woman. Ginsburg seems intent on dying as a Justice, but having three women on the court for the first time isn't a bad thing. Maybe we're a little surprised he didn't find an African-American, but that brings us to reason two: No Trail. These days, we don't look for the most experienced judge - we look for that ambiguous, nebulous judge who'll be tough to peg down. Call it a Metrosexual Old Navy kinda Judge..... With that, Obama may think he's hit gold, but like many things, he might have gone to the extreme again....
Remember Harriett Meiers? C'mon, it wasn't THAT long ago... She was W's first choice to join the Court a few years back. There wasn't much to her resume to indicate that she was the right choice, and she got dropped like a hot potato. Word is, Meiers is doing paralegal work at a local Binder & Binder office now.... While Kagan is not as bad a pick as Meiers, there is one fundamental requirement that we here ask of our picks for SCOTUS..... Could you at least have been a Judge?
Granted, Kagan is the Solicitor General, so she has plenty of experience in dealing with the Supreme Court. She essentially is the representative of the United States in all it's SCOTUS cases. But all her experience is from the wrong side of the bench. To us, an attorney's job is much different - their job is to basically do everything in their power to get a ruling in favor of their client. Is their job to find absolute truth? Not necessarily, and to some, hell no. Of course, many attorneys go from the court to the bench - it's a natural progression, but not straight to the Supreme Court. To us, this applies to anyone. If he picked Hillary Clinton, we'd be having an equal (if not worse) complaint. That brings us to a perfect example - right from the Palmetto State.....
South Carolina's own James F. Byrnes spent decades in Washington. He never went to law school, but passed the bar with help from a local firm in Charleston,before he became a Congressman and Senator. In 1940, his good friend, Franklin Roosevelt, tapped him to be on the Supreme Court, despite never having been a Judge. Byrnes was approved - and then spent less than 18 months on the court. According to Wikipedia, Byrnes quickly became bored with SCOTUS, and gladly quit to assist Roosevelt in the much more interesting Economic Stabilization Office. Had Byrnes been a judge for any time, our guess is that he would have bypassed any offers, and thus avoided the only thing close to a blemish on an otherwise stellar career....
Yeah, we're waiting for P-Luv to tell me I'm a retard who doesn't know his legal ass from his elbow - and maybe he's right. But we see the Kagan nomination as too much buddy-buddy politics, and not enough searching for the 'most qualified'. We're sure she's brilliant, but to us, only two guys deserve to be on SCOTUS without any experience behind the bench - P-Luv and THIS GUY ......
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6 comments:
Judicial experience is not the be all end all. Over a third of our SCOTUS Justices (something like 40 out of 110 or so) have assumed their seats on the highest court with no other judicial experience.
The problem I see with your premise is the idea that "seeking absolute truth" is the role of a judge. It's not (with the rare exception of bench trials I suppose). The role of a judge is to be able to interpret the law and guide the proceedings according to that interpretation of law in a way that best leads to a fair and just result. Knowledge of the law and an understanding of its applications in the real world would be the two things I would look at in any nominee. In my opinion, the best way to garner that experience is grinding away in the trenches actually representing clients. (That was my problem with Miers...she was nothing but a corporate lawyer who then went straight into "advistory" status working in government).
A friend of mine from lawschool just started blogging and put up the judicial experience of our current court: http://www.aaronpolkey.com/2010/05/11/judicial-experience/
You know what jumps out at me? You don't see a whole lot of "trial court" judicial experience by anyone. In fact, the most experienced one will probably surprise you: Sotomayor.
Here in SC, our circuit court judges move drastically more cases than their counterparts in Federal Courts. Just about all the judicial experience comes from the appellate level, which really is not "trying" cases in the sense the general public thinks about.
There is no doubt the benches of our state and country are filled with some brilliant legal minds. Same with the Dean's offices of our law schools. But for my money, some of best and most brilliant legal minds are sitting at those tables across from the bench, preparing cases, thinking on their feet and actually making arguments for their clients from the trial stage all the way to the Supreme Court.
These are the lawyers who I've seen shake their heads when the subject of assuming the bench has come up. They enjoy the actual practice too much to want to move from the actual playing field to the sidelines. Lawyers I refer to with reverence as the "old dogs." They have learned the law and it's good and bad the hard way. By winning and losing for years arguing it. If I was choosing a nominee, I'd see if I could entice one of those old dogs to take all that experience and knowledge and bring it to the highest bench in the land.
Or I'd see if I could get the My Cousin Vinny Judge...
When Obama made this pick I thought about the hell that GW took with Meirs
Are these two cousins
BORK, BORK, BORK
Can 'Bork' be used as a verb? Like 'I'd Bork that girl'?
It also makes me think of the Swedish Chef on the Muppets... 'Svin da fahrst meeden yi, um BORK BORK BORK'..
Mike-I have to agree with P-Luv that Kagan's lack of judical experience in and of itself is not a single disqualifing factor. That said we can summize her positions on issues like the 2nd amendment,abortion,illegal immigration,etc. from the arguements she has made as US Solicitor General.
It is those positions that should cause the greatest concern to conservatives and general public as they have clearly been left of center (and in some cases way out in left field--like in the cheap seats). While we can pretty much expect Senate Republicans will vote against her confirmation, watch to see what Hatch (R-Utah) does. Also watch the moderate democrats like Landeau (D-Louisana) and Bayh (D-Indiana); if they begin to question Kagan's positions she could be facing an uphill fight...teg
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