In a recent speech, Chief Justice Roberts suggested that having more former appellate judges on the Supreme Court makes the Court’s decisions less political. The NYT reports:
Over the life of the Supreme Court, its members were quite likely to be former governors, legislators, cabinet members, law professors and practicing lawyers. That mix of backgrounds and expertise might strike some as valuable, but the chief justice suggested that it tended to inject policy and politics into an area properly reserved for the law.
As late as 1972, when Chief Justice Roberts