Judging the judges: character and judicial history

The case of Abe Fortas provides an example of adult character failures. Fortas sat on the court for only 3 years ('66 to '69); he was appointed by Lyndon Johnson who later nominated Fortas as Chief Justice. In those hearings politically hostile senators (Dixiecrats) uncovered inappropriate financial dealings and political interaction with the White House while he served on the court. Fortas resigned from the court early in Nixon's administration and was replaced by Harry Blackmun.

Barney Frank and Larry Craig provide another example of acceptable sexual peccadilloes but unacceptable financial activity:

Particularly contentious now are sexual behaviors which if not criminal, are considered extraordinary bad form. But its odd how outrage works:

Rep. Barney Frank (D) survived a scandal involving his boyfriend/employee operating a male sex service out of Frank's home which Frank had (remarkably!) not noticed. Well, I suppose Frank was a very busy man. At any rate, Frank was censured for using office funds to fix his boyfriend's parking tickets, and I suppose for the extraordinary bad form of having a sex ring operating out of a congressional home. Frank was reelected by a substantial margin, however, after the scandal.

The failed effort to censure and expel Frank from the House was led by Rep. Larry Craig (R), whose congressional career went down in flames after he was arrested for propositioning a cop in a Minneapolis airport toilet stall. (The particular stall where Craig sought comfort and companionship became a toilet célèbre which led the airport authorities to dynamite the thing.) Craig might have survived the toilet incident, had he not used campaign funds ($200,000+) for his legal defense.

I consider it appropriate that neither Frank and Craig were expelled from the Senate for sexual behavior. Both of them were nailed on financial irregularities involving their sex scandals--which is appropriate.

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Quoting Bitter Crank

At any rate, Frank was censured for using office funds to fix his boyfriend's parking tickets, and I suppose for the extraordinary bad form of having a sex ring operating out of a congressional home. Frank was reelected by a substantial margin, however, after the scandal.

It's an interesting thing, where the general public is much more forgiving than are the representatives of the general public. Representatives are so worried about what the public may think and how that may damage their careers that they assume the public expects standards that they might not.

As with Barney Frank, his fellow Senators censured him, but the voters didn't care. Trump is another example. The left thought over and over they dealt him a knockout blow with all his buffoonery, but the voters didn't care.

Quoting Bitter Crank

What standards should a nominee to any high office meet to be approved by the Senate?

What standards should the whole nomination process follow?

Reply to ssu The process of nominee-selection will probably be partisan for the foreseeable future. It isn't so much a question of looking for good Dems or good Reps; it is now a matter of finding candidates who are generally ideologically suitable. How justices will rule isn't always obvious. Blackmun, nominated by Nixon, turned out to be a very liberal justice.

SC justices are not required to be lawyers or lower court judges. Having no knowledge of law would be a disadvantage, but not insurmountable.

Wide and varied experiences outside of the law are important. It is highly desirable that judges come from working and middle class origins, as well as a limited number from the small upper class.

A candidate should be well educated (this does not require a PhD from Harvard, Princeton, or Yale).

@tim wood Per Tim: "Intelligence, knowledge,, honesty,, integrity, character. Pretty much in this order." I left out tim's suggested "wisdom and courage"; both are good requirements if one can define them. We want wise and courageous public servants.

Reply to Hanover All people are flawed; many, most, all? have significant flaws, along with great strengths. Perhaps we need to think about what kinds of flaws we can and can not tolerate.

Prospective candidates can be winnowed out of the adult population in various ways, and it might be desirable to require presidents to choose from a prepared list. Perhaps presidents could be limited in the number of justices they can appoint. (It didn't bother the Republicans to ignore Obama's last appointment.)

Perhaps the court needs to be enlarged (for practical purposes; they can only hear about 80 cases a year). If it is enlarged, it should be enlarged over several presidentiads, not during the one administration.

The Justices are appointed for life, but there can be an age cap (like 80). Should justices be retired at a given age?

I'm fairly certain that the majority of the human race has blinders on when it comes to estimating their own personal moral integrity. Most of us are neither good people, nor bad people, we engage in both types of conduct quite frequently. However, with respect to Kavanaugh, we now know for a fact that he lied about using stolen emails from the Democratic party during his first confirmation hearing before a Senate committee. That alone disqualifies him from being a judge in his current position. Yet, the GOP members are overlooking this conduct. In fact, this conduct will likely get him disbarred by whichever state he has a law license. Lying under oath is a HUGE violation of attorney and judicial ethics.

Reply to LD Saunders See, those [the business with e-mail you mentioned] are the kinds of reasons that I would like to see for disqualifying a candidate to a nominated federal office. And I want the disqualifying acts to have been investigated and proven. Alleging that someone stole e-mails is not sufficient to act upon. I could allege that someone is a Russian spy, operates a child pornography studio, robs banks, or anything else. Why would anyone believe me? They would believe me if they felt I was a font of truth, if they felt they were obligated to believe me, or they felt compelled by their perception of public opinion to believe me, or at least create the impression that they believed me.

They could disbelieve me for similar reasons, and disbelief would be as valid as belief IF for the reasons just stated.

So it is, if someone is alleged to have have behaved inappropriately (whatever that means), the accusation should be ignored unless the accuser can come up with creditable evidence (like rape kit evidence, official photographs of the injuries (bruises, cuts, bleeding, witnesses to the acts, fingerprints, etc). If there isn't any evidence, then there isn't any evidence. That may be regrettable or highly inconvenient, but the lack of evidence can not be corrected by vehement insistence that an unsupported accusation be taken as truth.

#metoo is not the first or only instance of this sort of thing in the US, or elsewhere.

Bitter Crank: It is my understanding the GOP finally released the documents showing that Kavanaugh was aware of the emails and used them. His testimony before the previous Senate committee was that he had no idea about any such emails. Here is the thing too, as an attorney, an attorney who has reason to believe he has been sent confidential documents by mistake, and this does happen fairly often in the practice of law, the attorney is bound by the rules of ethics to immediately send them back, to let the other side know he received the documents which look like documents he never should have been sent, and he has to destroy his copy of the documents and cannot use them in any way. Kavanaugh definitely violated that ethical rule as well. I'm not sure if that alone would get him disbarred, but there would be a likely sanction. He's not fit to be on our highest court. He's not even close to being fit. In fact, he could be impeached if he is appointed. Lying under oath to a Senate committee alone would be grounds to later remove him from the Supreme Court.