DSD on the Democratic Presidential Supreme Court picks……

I’m sure it’s my own blinders, but it seems as if Democratic Presidents appoint reasonable but rather spongy moderates (Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor) while Republicans appoint true-believing ideologues (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas), with only Anthony Kennedy as more of a technical or non-ideological lawyer. I haven’t checked the sequence, but someone said that recent justices have always been replaced by someone more conservative or less liberal.

And as I’ve often said……

………..with the departure of Souter and O’Connor, there seems to be no one on the court who’s had regular experience, as a prosecutor, trial-level judge or public defender, with the way that motions are handled, testimony originally given and juries addressed at the pre-appellate level. This gives something of an unrealistic air to their theoretical expectations of (for example) what is an improper influence on a juror or an unreasonable burden on a defendant or plaintiff. A possible exception might be Thomas’s service in the Missouri Attorney General’s office, depending on what kind of work this involved (appeals or trial-level prosecutions and lawsuits).

Democratic Socialist Dave