Friday, January 13, 2006
assessing
If you got to design it, what system would you put in place to assess whether someone is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court? The person needs to be smart and be able to stay calm when everyone is tugging at them, literally or verbally. Needs to know lots about the way the U.S. legal system works (precedent, dependence on statute, etc.). I'm not sure if experience as a lawyer or judge is necessary - what do you think? And it gets stickier when emotional / religious / philosophical issues come into it. Since candidates are likely to be over 45 or so, they'll have done a lot of living and having opinions. Does that mean the person will inevitably be on one side or another of most issues? Is it even possible to be neutral on important issues? And what questions would be useful to ask to determine any of this? Clearly chewing on his head and attacking his schools and his character are poor ways of doing it. The idea is to find out if his or her points of view have ever, and therefore might ever again, sway him or her to decide differently as a judge than the law and the Constitution dictate. But how to find out?
Technorati tags: character, supreme court
Labels: politics, reflections
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