Constitutional Qualifications for Supreme Court Justice.

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Gunnar
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Constitutional Qualifications for Supreme Court Justice.

Post by Gunnar »

I find it somewhat scary that the U.S. Constitution lists no specific requirements to qualify for Supreme Court Justices other than that they must be nominated by the President and confirmed by a vote of the Senate. https://thelawdictionary.org/article/qu ... t-justice/
What Are The Preferred Qualifications Of A Supreme Court Justice?

The Constitution does not say that a Justice must be American born, a certain age, or hold any particular profession before being selected. However, most Justices tend to begin their tenure while in their 40s or 50s and may remain with the court as long as they wish or until they are impeached for improper behavior. Most Supreme Court nominees are personal acquaintances of the sitting President. An overwhelming majority of them attended law school and worked as a lawyer or served as a judge prior to their nomination. In fact, in the long history of the court, most of the Justices held some kind of public office before being confirmed.
Yet nothing in the Constitution precludes a President from just nominating any close friend or relative or partner in crime with no particular qualifications to become the next Supreme Court Justice. There is not even any specified requirement to have even attended an accredited law school, much less graduated from one or having passed a bar examination or ever having served as a sitting judge anywhere!
Qualifications To Be The Chief Justice

The court’s highest Justice, the Chief Justice, also is not required to have any specific qualifications. In fact, the Chief Justice isn’t even required to have served as an Associate Justice. For this position as well, an individual is nominated by the President when the Chief Justice’s seat becomes vacant. The Senate must confirm the President’s choice.
There is nothing in the Constitution that precludes the President from nominating the least qualified, most bigoted and most obviously corrupt sitting Justice (or, for that matter, someone who has never even served as an Associate Justice) to become the next Chief Justice, when that seat becomes vacant. Of course, whether the Senate will confirm that choice is a different matter, but can we even preclude that from happening if Trump, or someone like him, who has succeeded in intimidating the hard core of his party into rubberstamping anything he decides to do, becomes President again?
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
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