No (Political) Experience Required for Supreme Court — George Will
The greatest justice, John Marshall, who made the court a nation-shaping force, had been a state legislator and congressman. Between 1789 and 1952, most justices had some legislative or executive political experience. Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a former president, was followed by Charles Evans Hughes, a former New York governor. Hugo Black had been a senator from Alabama. Earl Warren had been California’s governor, which became a problem: Because President Eisenhower, like many others, believed that political thinking sometimes supplanted jurisprudential reasoning in Warren’s decision-making, he sought judicial experience in his remaining four nominees.
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