July 17, 2005

Historian Best for Supreme Court Justice

Could the next Supreme Court justice not be a judge? Hopefully, perhaps.

The chattering class is all a twitter – trying to influence President Bush’s appointment of a Supreme Court Justice replacing Sandra Day O’Connor.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist at age 80 is fighting thyroid cancer – a curable type. However, he spent two days with fever in a hospital last week. Ambulance chasers speculate that he also might resign unexpectedly.

Senatorial Democrats struggle to change the Constitution’s “advise and consent” to “revise and filibuster.”

In “reaching out” to liberals -- a futile tactic to pacify ossified ideologues – Bush invited a gaggle of Senators to vent at a White House coffee. To the chagrin of Dems, Dubya just listened.

Hey! He didn’t submit a list of names to be knocked down. Worse, none of the coffee mates advised a short list for the President.

Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, ventured a first-rate idea.

“It would be good to move away from having all Supreme Court justices be graduates from the courts of appeals.”

“When we had Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 -- a big case in the history of the country (desegregating public schools) – there were three ex-senators and one ex-governor on the court, a broader experience.”

After Chief of Staff Karl Rove passed around the smelling salts, President Bush blurted, “You bet!”

It is obvious that Specter believes he should be the next Supreme.

So do 99 other Senators -- especially the 14 of O’Connor’s gender. Replace one with one. Or more, until the court is 5-4 reflecting the proportion of women-to- men in the population.

Then we could fine-tune the court with liberals, conservatives, moderates, whites, blacks, Orientals, Hispanics, Native Americans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, tree-huggers and devotees of daylight saving time.

Chief Justice at Brown v. Board was Earl Warren. His court was more diverse than that remembered by Specter.

Warren had never been a judge, but he served three terms as California governor and had run for vice- president on the Republican ticket in 1949. He was an assistant attorney general when President Richard Nixon selected him in 1971.

Serving with Warren were three former senators and two former attorneys general.

Another Nixon appointment was Lewis F. Powell, Jr., a lawyer who had served as president of the American Bar Association and chairman of the Richmond, Va. school board.

Of the 108 people who have served on the Supreme Court, only 48 were sitting judges. Others were six Senators, two Representatives and three governors.

Now that you are in the throes of apostasy, I posit that the next Supreme should be a historian of politics.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich jumps to mind. He is a so-called “conservative;” but this stems from his knowledge – and practice -- of constitutional intent. Remember the Contract With America.

An alternate is Michael R. Beschloss, noted on Public Television as a “presidential historian.” Presidents tend to be devious, while the Constitution is absolute. Yet, he is an even-handed scholar.

If the Senate couldn’t agree on one or the other, it could pick a good high school history teacher at random.

Sen. Specter says truly: “Longtime judges could hold too narrow a view -- particularly when ruling on cutting edge questions that have recently put courts at odds with Congress.

“If they had a little more practical experience – and didn’t work so much within footnotes and semicolons -- they might have a different perspective.”

Right on!

Lindsey Williams is a Sun columnist who can be contacted at linwms@lindseywilliams.org