Opinion The Democratic Candidates Should Tell Us Now Who They'll Put on the Supreme Court

[brooklynite]

New York Times

A judge’s career background doesn’t always predict her rulings — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, often stands up for the accused. But she is the exception. Federal judicial opinions typically read as if their authors have given little thought to how an excessively punitive criminal justice system can ruin lives, decimate families and lay waste to entire communities.

To upend this dynamic, Democratic presidential candidates must commit themselves to appointing federal judges who will work to challenge mass incarceration. This will mean going beyond anything President Barack Obama attempted. When Mr. Obama wrote a 55-page law review article on what a president could do to push criminal justice reform, he made no mention of judicial appointments. Worse, his appointments displayed almost the same pro-prosecution bias as his predecessors’: About 40 percent of his judicial nominees had worked as prosecutors, while some 15 percent had been public defenders.

Democratic candidates should promise to eliminate this bias by reshaping the federal bench so that it has as many former public defenders as it does former prosecutors. The Supreme Court is a good place to start. Remember when Donald Trump courted the conservative right by announcing the names of possible nominees several months before the 2016 election? Any Democratic candidate who wants to win the votes of a Democratic electorate increasingly focused on criminal justice reform should make a similar announcement — and populate the list with lawyers who have seen the criminal system from the standpoint of the accused.

There is no shortage of quality names. High on my list would be Bryan Stevenson, a career death penalty opponent, consummate Supreme Court litigator and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama. Or Michelle Alexander, former law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun, civil rights lawyer and author of the canonical “The New Jim Crow.” (Ms. Alexander is also an opinion columnist for The New York Times.) Or Sherrilyn Ifill, a voting rights expert and head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the civil rights firm founded by Thurgood Marshall in 1940.

[emulatorloo]

1. Why? So Republicans can start a vile character assassination campaign of these judges early?

Probably better for candidates to describe the kind of judge they are looking for without naming names.

[Andy823]

2. Good point! nt

[TwilightZone]

3. Agreed.

Besides, I'm pretty sure that most of our candidates - the ones with a legitimate chance of winning the nomination, certainly - would be using similar criteria when selecting potential nominees. Joe Biden isn't going to nominate a John Roberts type to the court.

Kind of reminds me of 2016 when some claimed that both Trump and Clinton would nominate similarly-conservative judges, so the SC wasn't an important consideration in voting. It was a ridiculous assertion, of course, but that didn't stop the Jill Stein types from propagating it.

[emulatorloo]

4. Yeah, I remember that bizarre argument as well.

They were adamant that Trump and Clinton were “the same”, despite Trump’s history of screwing over working people and Clinton’s history of working to lift up vulnerable people in our country.

[Dave in VA]

5. Oh Yes, Please

Also why not list all of their undersecretaries for state and defense and treasury, too! Let's just hang every minute detail around our candidates neck so they can be clobbered by cries about this persons taxes, or that persons affair with so-and-so.

Dear god! These people are so full of shiitt!!!!!!

/sarcasm......