Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia isn't the only one pouring cold water on the claim -- hyped by Fox News and the GOP -- that Elena Kagan is unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court because she has never been a judge. In an ABC News interview that aired this morning, fellow Reagan appointee and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor also refuted the claim that judicial experience is a necessary qualification for the job. From the ABC News transcript of George Stephanopoulos' interview with O'Connor:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does it matter if someone hasn't been a judge before they go to the Supreme Court?
O'CONNOR: I don't think it does. We've had at least a third of the justices over time were never a judge. I think it's fine, just fine. If you ... are a scholarly in nature, if you are willing to do all the reading (LAUGH) and the homework, you'll be fine. If you can write well, think well, you'll be fine.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And from what you've seen of Elena Kagan, I know you know her a little bit, do you think she'll be confirmed?
O'CONNOR: I would think so. She seems to be very well qualified academically.
Indeed, after airing a clip of O'Connor's interview on Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos and GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts noted Scalia's comments, as well as the fact that Chief Justice William Rehnquist had no judicial experience prior to being appointed to the Supreme Court. (For those of you keeping track, Rehnquist, too, is a Reagan appointee, having been elevated to the position of chief justice by Reagan following his initial appointment to the Supreme Court by Nixon.) From GMA:
ROBERTS: But Kagan got an unlikely little boost from someone in the Supreme Court.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Not only Justice O'Connor says she thinks she'll be confirmed and says that not being a judge doesn't matter. Justice Scalia, who's likely to be a conservative adversary if Kagan gets confirmed, pointed out that everybody on the bench now is a judge, so he went on to say, I'm happy to see that this latest nominee is not a federal judge and not a judge at all. Of course Kagan has gotten some criticism from some senators because she's not a judge, but there you've got Justice Scalia saying, well, that could be a good thing.
ROBERTS: Of course, in the past, there have been others who have been justices that were not a judge.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist -
ROBERTS: -- Rehnquist, yeah.
More than three dozen Supreme Court justices had no prior judicial experience at the time they were first nominated, including two of the past four chief justices, eight of the 17 chief justices in history, and seven of the nine justices who decided Brown v. Board of Education. Moreover, Kagan's legal experience is comparable to that of conservative justices Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, and John Roberts at the time of their nomination. Indeed, numerous conservatives, legal experts, and journalists have agreed that Kagan is qualified.
Watch the clip from GMA: