Lack of Experience

One of the conservatives and GOP's major talking points about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kegan is her supposed lack of experience. After all she is the first non-judge to be appointed since William Rehnquist.

Hmmm...maybe they have a point. Just point to Rehnquist's judicial record, i.e. Bush v. Gore. Obviously he didn't know what he was doing. But then Rehnquist had a track record, writing a memorandum arguing against federal-court-ordered school desegregation while the court was considering Brown v. Board of Education and complaints about Rehnquist's attempts to discourage minority voters in Arizona elections when he served as a pollwatcher in the early 1960s.

It's doubtful that a Kagan-Rehnquist comparison will be brought up by the right, and it's also doubtful conservatives, who decry her lack of judicial experience, will bring up the fact that she was appoint to the Court of Appeals in June 1999 but Republicans denied her a vote to serve on the court.

That seat later went to John Roberts who compiled all of two years experience as a judge before being named CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT. So if two years was enough experience to serve as Chief Justice, would one year's worth of experience be okay for a regular justice? How about a year as Solicitor General, the nation's lawyer before the Supreme Court.

And just look at past Solicitor Generals who also had no courtroom experience - Robert Bork, Ken Starr...hmmm...Rehnquist, Bork, Starr, not exactly a ringing endorsement.