On the Credentials of Federal Judges

Reason reports that a comparative study of Fifth Circuit nominees across three decades finds uneven credential profiles — and implies, in its headline's dry wit, that the answer to judicial quality is not simply found in the résumé. I am drawn to this question not as a novelty but as a recurring one. Every generation must ask anew what preparation best equips a person to say, calmly and finally, what the law is.

I would begin with what credentials can tell us. Legal training, experience at the bar, prior judicial service — these are indicators of familiarity with the forms of law. A judge who has never argued a case, never written a brief under the pressure of a client's need, enters the bench without a certain friction that refines judgment. That much experience teaches. I do not dismiss the credential; I simply refuse to let it serve as the whole inquiry.

What credentials cannot tell us is whether a nominee will practice restraint — the discipline of deciding only what the case requires, of resisting the temptation to legislate from the bench or to follow popular sentiment into areas where the court has no warrant to go. That quality is a matter of character and disposition, not of the institution that awarded the degree. I observed this in my own time, and I infer from the shape of Reason's analysis that the pattern has not changed.

The confirmation process, whatever its present form, ought to probe precisely this disposition. It is reasonable — I mark this as inference, not recollection — that nominees with narrower credential profiles may nonetheless bring a fidelity to text and precedent that the most decorated graduate may lack. The reverse is also true. Neither outcome is guaranteed by the pedigree. The question the Senate must ask is not merely where did you study but how do you understand the obligation of the robe.

A judiciary that commands public confidence earns it slowly, through the accumulation of decisions that are seen to be principled rather than convenient. Each nominee either adds to that accumulation or diminishes it. I would counsel those responsible for selection and confirmation alike: treat the credential as the beginning of the conversation, and treat the character of the candidate's prior reasoning as its substance. The bench is not a prize for a distinguished career; it is a trust, accepted on behalf of those who will appear before it seeking justice under law.