It’s a trick question, raised mostly by Republicans. There is no such person as the “most qualified” nominee, but there are many supremely qualified African American women. It is well past time to break another glass ceiling on SCOTUS, as I explain in my new column for The Hill.
Here is the gist:
Who's most qualified to become the next Supreme Court justice?
We do not yet know whom President Biden will nominate for the soon-to-be vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). But it appears that many Republicans want him to name a person who does not actually exist. In response to Biden’s commitment to appoint the first Black woman in the court’s 232-year history, some conservative critics have demanded that he instead nominate the “most qualified” candidate, without regard to race or gender.
One conservative commentator identified a male appellate court judge as the “objectively best pick,” calling everyone on Biden’s list a “lesser Black woman.” In truth, however, there is no such individual as the “objectively best pick” or the “most qualified” nominee. Instead, there are dozens of lawyers and judges, and probably more, of all backgrounds, who are supremely qualified for SCOTUS. It makes perfect sense for Biden to determine that it is past time for one of the many remarkably gifted African American women to be seated on the court.
It is reasonable for presidents and senators of the same party to extol the virtues of their nominees. But it was just silly when Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, declared that Brett Kavanaugh was the “most qualified Supreme Court nominee in our nation’s history.” What does that say, after all, about Neil Gorsuch, whom President Trump named the year before he nominated Kavanaugh? Should we conclude that Gorsuch, by Grassley’s lights, must have been a “lesser” white man?
You can read the full essay at The Hill.
Let's try it this way.
From the Univ of Mich, Office of Institutional Equity.
"When drafting a job posting, it is important to use words and phrases that do not imply, directly or indirectly, that you are not interested in candidates of a certain race, color, … gender … Job postings should not indicate a preference for persons of a particular race or color, even when a department seeks to do so in an effort to increase the racial diversity of its department."
provost.umich[dot]edu/images/oie-docs/JobPostAvoidDiscrimination.pdf
Are there are no rules, just a bare knuckled contest and insatiable lust for power and control over others?
Let's get back to finding someone, for the sake of justice, who votes based on her "empathy" for those she "empathizes" with and bases her claim to wisdom on her identity as a woman of a particular ethnicity. Let's make sure that the nominee considers her judgment superior to others' based on gender and ethnicity, as in:
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Oh, and btw, reference to choosing “most qualified” person is far from being a partisan issue "raised mostly by Republicans."
Objective scholarly works demonstrate that phrase is commonly used to describe the nomination process. See, e.g, Congressional Research Service, Supreme Court Appointment Process: President’s Selection of a Nominee, Updated January 28, 2022:
“Other times, the White House may, at least in the early prenomination stage, reveal the names of Supreme Court candidates being considered. Such openness may be intended to serve various purposes—among them, to … demonstrate the President’s determination to conduct a comprehensive search for the most qualified person available.”
And, at footnote 41,
“While the ‘desire to appoint justices sympathetic to their own ideological and policy views may drive most presidents in selecting judges,’ the field of potentially acceptable nominees for most presidents, according to Watson and Stookey, is narrowed down by at least five ‘subsidiary motivations’ … [including] picking the most qualified nominee. [citing] Watson and Stookey, Shaping America, p. 59.
There is no partisan demonization available with respect to use of this phrase. Sorry.
Congress should allow Biden to add four Justices to the Supreme Court and then Biden could say at least one of them will be a black woman. That way, no one is excluded from consideration and Ilya Shapiro and the above Anon poster should be happy.
I will note Trump appointed dozens of Appellate Judges and not a single African-American – so we can’t say racial discrimination is over in the courts. Someone has to make up for Republican discrimination to balance things out; and unless seats are added to the courts we do not know if Biden will get a second pick.
Yurl
At what point would you consider the proper "share" of political "spoils" has been achieved by each race, gender and ethnicity? Should we divide up the seats on the court by proportion in the population, and award seats accordingly?
Why not have a court of, say, 100 members? that would make it easier, perhaps. And, in the view of some folks, the court would have so much more crediblity.
Like the school board in SF.
The school board in SF is a good example of an institution which did not reflect the will of the people. Our SCOTUS is heavily Republican, although more people have voted Democratic in all but one election in the last 34 years. But the SF school board has a recall procedure so the people were able to change that.
A recall procedure for SCOTUS would be welcome.
Is it the "will of the people" to have seats on the SCOTUS allocated by race, gender, etc.?
What the SF School Board Election was about was a group of "leaders" who focused on race and gender and "progressive" renaming of schools, doing away with merit based magnet schools, etc.
Even in a jurisdiction that is 85% Democrat, enough was enough.
By the way, there is a recall procedure for SCOTUS. It seems that "progressives" -who often don't really seem to be focused on "the will of the people" – aren't aware of it.
And, anticipating a facile response, tell us what "good behavior" means!
"Congress should allow Biden to add four Justices to the Supreme Court and then Biden could say at least one of them will be a black woman."
But she'd really just be a transgendered, transracial white guy? Preferably without a law degree, too.