Obama picks Kagan for Supreme Court
By teamrose
@teamrose (1492)
United States
May 11, 2010 1:27am CST
Never been a judge before....am I missing something?
Personally, I think that Supreme Court nominees should have judicial experience, but there have been a number of Justices in the past that were not previously judges, including some excellent ones like Earl Warren (I realize most people here won't agree with my characterization of him Grin). In fact, Earl Warren was appointed as the Chief Justice without any judicial experience (I also believe that the Chief Justice should be nominated from within the ranks of the Supreme Court Justices).
2 people like this
4 responses
@_sketch_ (5742)
• United States
11 May 10
Obama, a man who knows very little about politics, hiring a man as a judge for the highest court who knows nothing about being a judge. Sounds about right. It's who you know, not who you are.
@TheMetallion (1834)
• United States
11 May 10
For someone who knows very little about Politics, President Obama is amazingly good at it, if you consider how many people have been it much longer and not gotten nearly as far as he has.
@TTCCWW (579)
• United States
11 May 10
I don't beleive any of them should come from previous bench experience.
Until recent years none of the justices came from the bench they were politicians academics and in some cases friends of the president.. We need people with real world experiences and those that understand the regular world.
Kagan has aurgued for both sides in courtrooms including the supreme court. Cheif Justice Roberts had very little bench experience when nominated. He came from a politico background.
The Supreme Court is so unlike any other bench that a regular judge would not bring anything to the table that anyone else would.
Requirements, a deep understanding of the constitution and our history.
@TTCCWW (579)
• United States
12 May 10
The constitution is a living document that has to be applied to the current world.
If all you have for personal experience is a courtroom you have a very narrow view of the world.
Example, there is nothing written in the constitution about privacy yet we all expect certain privacy's, it simply never occurred to a group of men that could legally shoot anyone who came on their property to include this in the constitution.
@TTCCWW (579)
• United States
15 May 10
It would be hard to name very many Supreme court justices that would not refer to the constitution as a "living document" their term not mine.
Cheif Justice William Rehnquist is the only one I can name without going back some time in history. He was staucnch in his beleif that you could not imply what was not written in black and white on the original document yet he could never publicly reconcile how he made decissions about FCC regulations, womens rights, modern communications, international finance, the right to bear arms, this list could go for pages.
If it was simply a set of laws to be followed then we would not have to keep up with the courts decissions through the years for precedent.
Last time I looked at the constitution I did not read anything in it about internet copyright law, nor did it have anything about a womens right to vote and yet their have been decissions by the court and those and many other modern issues.
@dragon54u (31633)
• United States
12 May 10
An incompetent president picking incompetent people does not surprise me at all. Excuse me, I should not have said POTUS is incompetent--he is VERY competent at destroying this country from within and I now believe he is doing it very deliberately. This latest appointment is further proof, in my opinion.
