A reader writes:
I had the great honor of clerking at the United States Supreme Court (and before that, clerking for a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals who was later appointed to the Supreme Court). It is a wonderful, wonderful place to be if you like quiet, if you don’t mind having a staff of perhaps six or so people total, if you enjoy spending your days reading briefs, opinions, and memos by kids a year out of law school, and if you like keeping a low profile. (And if you don’t mind wading through the many cases that don’t make the headlines because -- unless you are a law nerd -- they are boring.)
In other words, even though it is a position of great power, it is one where daily life bears not the slightest resemblance to daily life for a person near the top of the Executive or Legislative branch.
Your decisions are made in private, then issued publicly in written opinions mired in legal precedent. You are not supposed to discuss publicly matters that are or may come before the court, and you are not supposed to elaborate much on your decisions after they are made. And, although people may argue about how well this standard has been maintained, you are expected to behave with greater decorum than is expected of our elected officials.
I cannot claim to understand HRC or her ambitions. But I suspect this kind of life would drive her crazy, and Bill even crazier.
But my fear is not that she will be offered this position and refuse it there is no harm in that. My fear is that she will accept it, and then turn it into something hyper-politicized, where every opinion is announced from the bench, and accompanied by public speeches condemning a conservative ruling, urging the legislature to overturn a result, encouraging protests, etc. And what precedent might this set for the next time a Republican President gets a Supreme Court nomination?
I hope I am being far too pessimistic in my assessment of how HRC would behave as justice. I would be delighted to be proven wrong. Certainly I have no doubt at all that that she has the intellectual heft for the job. But I worry.