The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article about Jon Lott’s study of credentials and judicial confirmation rates. To make a long story short, the study suggests that more credentialed nominees to federal courts of appeal take longer to confirm.
“It is pretty much the dumber you are, the easier it is to get on the court,” [Lott] says.
A presidential nominee to an appeals-court post who attended one of the nation’s top 10 law schools, served on that school’s law review, and clerked for a US Supreme Court justice takes twice as long to win Senate confirmation than an appeals-court nominee with none of those qualifications, Lott says.
The question is, why?
I think the answer lies in the recognizable correlation, at least in the last 20 or 30 years, between the credentials of lower court judicial nominees and their eventual influence as judges. An unusual number of the most influential judges had extremely impressive credentials as judicial nominees, including Judges Posner, Easterbrook, Kozinski, Luttig, and W. Fletcher, just to name a few. These judges tend to have unusual influence on their colleagues, on academics, and on their clerks, a number of whom go on to clerk at the Supreme Court. They are also more likely to be in the running themselves for future openings on the Supreme Court.
Given this, it’s understandable that there would tend to be more Senate opposition to more highly credentialed nominees. On average, the stakes are higher.
Thanks to Michael Cernovich for the link.
UPDATE: Lawprof Avery Katz writes in with an alternative explanation that strikes me as quite possible. Avery suggests that selection effects might explain the difference:
Judges with weaker academic credentials are likelier to have been chosen for their political connections, often including connections with Senators. Judges with stronger academic credentials are likelier to have been chosen by young hotshots at the Office of Legal Counsel.
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