More Politicians, Please

I don't think a Supreme Court appointment for Hillary Clinton would be a good idea -- she's 61 years old and since Supreme Court justices have lifetime tenure (which we should, in my view, scrap in favor of something like a non-renewable 12-year term), the wise president will find a nominee in her early forties. I don't, however, think Dana Goldstein's objection holds water:

I'd be concerned Hillary as a justice would begin a trend of even further politicizing the Court by opening it up to career politicians. Granted, the Court is already totally politicized. But at least now it has less the appearance of being that way.

This is a common misunderstanding, but justices have traditionally been politicians and not faux-apolitical technocrats. And that, I think, is how it should be. It's desirable for justices to have substantial legal experience, but lots of politicians have that. A justice shouldn't act just like he or she is a special kind of senator, but at the end of the day finding satisfactory resolutions for the questions the Court needs to deal with is a problem that requires statesmanship (or womanship as the case may be) not specialist legal knowledge.

Meanwhile, I don't genuinely think anyone is fooled by the current set of pretenses surrounding the Court. Normal people understand that a question like whether or not a constitutional guarantee of "the equal protection of the laws" prohibits state universities from using affirmative action admissions procedures isn't really a question where the more knowledgeable people are about the law the more they converge on the "correct" answer. All the prevailing process serves to do is to obscure what's at stake in nominations to the judiciary and in political debates about nominations and confirmations. One of the most important powers the president has is to appoint judges, and the public ought to hear more from the candidates about it than vague bromides about strict construction.