I am so pleased that President Biden has proposed a number of Supreme Court reforms, including a term limit. Here is another that wouldn’t take a Constitutional amendment or even a law. Start appointing men and women who are not attorneys.
By the time a case reaches the Supreme Court, it is no longer a legal question. Should abortion be allowed? Should the president have immunity for crimes committed? Does the Second Amendment apply to machine guns? Those are not legal questions. While Justices like to cite precedents, they have an army of law clerks to find past examples of cases backing their opinions.
The Senate is 51% attorneys. The House is approximately 30% attorneys. The current President is an attorney. The whole government is skewed to the legal profession. That profession is taught to think in terms of winners and losers, guilty or not guilty. In our daily life we usually don’t think that way and neither should the Court.
Historically we have had justices who were not lawyers, but not in recent years. Why not a philosophy professor, or a teachers’ union president, or a business leader, or a physician?
(I might add that most of the justices hail from elite law schools. Harvard and Yale are way over-represented. Also not a good idea.)
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