Posted on 07/03/2018 4:36:31 AM PDT by richardb72
Here is a simple rule: you can judge the caliber of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee by how angry the Democrats get. The smarter and more influential the nominee, in an important sense the more qualified they are, the angrier Democrats will get.
This past Wednesday, within hours of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announced retirement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that Democrats will fight against any nominee picked from “President Trump’s pre-ordained list selected by powerful special interests.” It is irrelevant that Trump ran on that list of 25 nominees or that 21 percent of voters considered U.S. Supreme Court appointments to be the most important factor in casting their votes.
Still there are some nominees from that list who will upset Schumer and others much more than others, and despite what Democrats claim, abortion isn’t the primary issue.
Following all federal judge appointments for over the past four decades, I found that confirmations took much longer and they were much less likely to be successful for graduates of top-10 law schools who served on their school’s law reviews. In fact, it took 65 percent longer compared with graduates who neither went to top law schools nor did particularly well there. Among nominations from the Carter administration through Obama’s first term, confirmations took about 160 percent longer for the top students at top law schools who further distinguished themselves with clerkships on the Supreme Court.
Why is there the greatest opposition to the smartest nominees? You find the same phenomenon in jury selection, where lawyers often disfavor intelligent candidates or ones who make a living by persuading others. The concern is that these people will have a strong influence on their fellow jurors. Greg Mankiw, a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, was only considered for five minutes before being dismissed from jury duty. As he later wrote on his blog, “The only information they had about me at the time was based on a brief questionnaire, which did not say much more than my name, address, and occupation.” This caused Mankiw to wonder: “Why does being a professor of economics at Harvard make one an undesirable juror in such a case?”
Similarly, Democratic senators don’t want a conservative Supreme Court Justice, even one who is somewhat closer to their views, who will be effective at persuading his colleagues.
Justices or lower-court federal judges can also exert influence by writing powerfully-worded decisions that are more likely to be cited in future rulings. Here, the evidence of “dumbing down” is striking. According to my research, federal judges whose opinions once they were on the bench were cited 20 percent more often than those of their peers faced 60 percent longer confirmation processes. Senators turn out to be very good at predicting how influential judges will be, and looking directly at citations is an even better measure of influence than where someone went to law school.
Many politicians are going to do whatever they can to block the selection of smart people whose views differ from their own. This phenomenon has been borne out in the increasingly contentious confirmation fights of recent years.
In the past, Democrats had no trouble accepting a Republican Supreme Court nominee who strongly opposes abortion as long as they weren’t very smart. When President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, fellow Republicans threatened to embarrass Miers by asking law school exam type questions during her confirmation. They saw her as an intellectually weak pick, and they were happy when she withdrew her nomination.....
The SCOTUS nomination is a hugh fundraiser for the RATS. The louder they scream, the more money they raise from their marxist base.
Oh, so true. The politicians are afraid that a smart person will show them up to be the incompetent boobs they most often are.
Can't make a good living in the private sector because you are either not smart enough, don't have the energy or ambition? Become a politician where the competition isn't so tough. Pathetic.
pre-ordained list selected by powerful special interests.”
Seems to me that those “interests” are We, the People.
Supreme Court nominee opposition is a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”. “Sound and Fury” is an allusion referring to a great uproar and passionate exclaim that ultimately means nothing.
They are powerless.
It doesn’t matter who Pres. Trump picks t be on the Supreme Court. The liberal socialist snowflakes will demean, disparage, and ridicule them. Especially if the pick is a woman. The left doesn’t care about a judge that will uphold the Constitution. They want a judge will disregard the Constitution, and make laws to destroy our Republic. We already see the Maniacal Socialist Media (MSM) on the Judges that Pres. Trump picks to be a SC Judge will follow the Constitution and therefore not be placed on the Court. They want a judge who make up new ‘laws’ that are Anti-Constitutional to destroy the principals that the Founding Fathers wanted to insure our CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC SURVIVES!!!
In all due respect to the author of the article, John Lott, Jr., intelligent people are readily available for the taking. That is not the issue (plenty of ‘intelligent’ professors in our universities, no?).
We need people with wisdom.
You can judge the worth of any political proposition by how angry the demonicRATs get. It's an extension of the cold war Soviet Anger Principle: You could judge the worth of any foreign policy proposition by how angry the Russkies got.
Wisdom > intelligence by miles. Absolutely.
In the past, Schmuckie would get on TV and announce what the minority was going to do to derail the majority, and the President (Bush) would cave.
Now, the RINO’s like Ryan and McConnell cave.
Trump won’t, in fact I think it gets him to do the opposite, knowing that’s probably the right choice if schmuckie is against it.
Trump might be ‘crazy-enough’ to forward two names to the Senate committee and just hint that one is in reserve and ready to go when the next guy goes. They would spend days saying you can’t do that, and kinda notice that there is nothing preventing Trump from doing that.
At WORST (from the Left’s perspective), the Court goes from 4-2-3 (L to R) to 4-1-4... a balanced Court... and they’re losing their minds. What more can they do when it REALLY changes and Ginsburg and Breyer both leave soon, making a potential 2-1-6?
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