When a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court arises, it can only be filled by the president of the United States, with Senate approval. To become a Supreme Court justice, there is no requirement, constitutional or otherwise, that a nominee have prior experience as a judge or even as a lawyer, though only 11 of the 111 in US history did not attend law school, and the majority of those were in the 18th and 19th centuries, when a law degree was not required to practice law. Harvard Law School has had the most graduates &emdash; 14 &emdash; go on to become Supreme Court justices, while Yale Law School has had ten students go on to become Supreme Court justices, and Columbia Law School has had seven alumni become Supreme Court justices.
Despite the fact that there are no formal requirements for a Supreme Court justice nominee, the vetting process is rigorous before and after a presidential nomination. The president’s staff will conduct a thorough investigation into potential nominees in order to uncover and evaluate any potentially damaging information from the candidate’s professional or personal life. In addition, the president will conduct personal interviews with candidates. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which will hold hearings on the nomination before referring it to the full Senate for ratification, will require the nominee to complete an extensive questionnaire once nominated.
Many of those who went on to become supreme court justices had judicial experience, but whether that experience helps a nominee’s ratification is debatable. A nominee will testify before the Judiciary Committee as part of the ratification process, which can best be described as a very public job interview. The committee will have conducted a thorough investigation into the nominee’s life, and any judicial activity will be scrutinized in detail in order to uncover any biases or ideologies that could cause controversy.
For example, abortion is a contentious issue in the United States, and senators try to learn how the nominee would vote in an abortion case if it reached the Supreme Court during the ratification process. Nominees, for their part, consistently refuse to answer any questions that attempt to determine how they would vote in a specific set of circumstances, claiming that doing so would jeopardize their impartiality in the event that such a case arises, jeopardizing the judicial process’ integrity. However, if the nominee had ever served as a judge in an abortion case, the possibility that one side or the other would try to use that case, and the nominee’s role in it, to derail the nomination might be enough to withdraw the nomination or offer it to someone else in the first place.
As a result, anyone interested in becoming a supreme court justice should first obtain a law degree from a prestigious law school, and then pursue a career free of controversy in the hopes of attracting the president’s attention and admiration while avoiding the wrath of too many senators.