President Obama has outlined his view for selecting judges, and I'm happy that it's basically the opposite approach that his predecessor took:
I think the Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways. And one way is a cramped and narrow way in which the Constitution and the courts essentially become the rubber stamps of the powerful in society. And then there's another vision of the court that says that the courts are the refuge of the powerless. Because oftentimes they can lose in the democratic back and forth. They may be locked out and prevented from fully participating in the democratic process. ... And we need somebody who's got the heart — the empathy — to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old -- and that's the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges.
Obama has a lot of excellent people to choose from, but I happen to know four of the people being bandied about for the Supreme Court nomination, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on some of the nominees as people. For some dish on Pam Karlan, who is the smartest person I know, check out below the field . . .
Pam Karlan is unquestionably academically qualified to be on the Supreme Court. She is scary smart. From Wikipedia, I learned that she graduated high school a year early after getting near perfect SATs. She went to Yale undergrad, Yale law school and then clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun (the author of Roe v. Wade) on the Supreme Court. After clerking, Pam had her choice of jobs paying huge salaries, but instead she chose to work for the NAACP. She is now a professor at Stanford, and she is a well-known legal scholar and legal advocate.
I think Pam Karlan's best qualification for the Supreme Court may be her empathy. As a lawyer, this manifests in her ability to look at injustice, be outraged, and use the law to make our world a better place. As a judge, we would see it in opinions that recognize that our Constitution exists to help protect the vulnerable, not the powerful.
Pam is gay and would be our first openly gay Supreme Court justice. She has been an advocate for the LGBT community. For instance, she recently wrote a succesful amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case where the Supreme Court held that laws against consensual sodemy were unconstitutional (in other words, that you can't arrest two gay people for what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms). More generally, she has used her talents to give voice to the voiceless - she has fought for racial minorities and for people discriminated against in the voting process.
In addition to being brilliant, Pam is witty. However, she does not suffer fools gladly (a lesson I still vividly remember from my first year of law school). If she were on the Court, I could very much see her as a liberal Scalia, cutting down stupid arguments with which she disagrees.
Full disclosure: I'm biased. Pam was my law school professor (she traumatized me as a first-year law student and, ever since, has been extremely helpful); she was the faculty advisor when we founded the Stanford Chapter of the American Constitution Society and I worked with her on several events (most inspiring for me was an event with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was Martin Luther King's righthand man in Birmingham Alabama); she helped me get my current job; and she informally advises my employer on complex areas of constitutional law. But, bias aside, she's an extraordinary person and I figured Kossacks might be interested in learning a little more about her.