The Case for Judge J. Michelle Childs to Replace Justice Breyer
Let’s Bring the Supreme Court Back Down to Earth,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie writes, “It is something we’ve lost in our current norms regarding the court, where members come from a handful of the same law schools, have some of the same kinds of experience and largely avoid any public-facing political work before donning the robes of a Supreme Court justice.”Over the last several days, I combed through the backgrounds of the leading contenders to take Justice Stephen Breyer’s place on the Supreme Court, and one stands out for her assumed street smarts and ability to bring the Court back down to earth, and her law degree from the University of South Carolina, and that is South Carolina judge J.
Michelle Childs.Childs did not attend an Ivy league school, which would make her an outlier on the court. Amy Coney-Barrett received her law degree from Notre Dame, about as close as you can come to being an Ivy league school.The rest of the court?
All Harvard or Yale. Breyer attended Harvard, as did Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch. Sotomayor and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh attended Yale.
Talk about a lopsided majority.And the leading contenders to fill Breyer’s seat? According to the Associated Press, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Wilhelmina Wright are Harvard Law graduates.
