THE COLLEGE OF CLERKS: “Today’s nomination of Judge Jackson makes me wonder if any future Justice will be selected without having previously clerked on the Supreme Court. Justice Sotomayor was the last Justice nominated without such a clerkship, though Justice Thomas and Justice Alito also did not clerk for a Justice. The Pope (at least in modern times) must come from the College of Cardinals. That may work well for the Church, but I’m not sure it’s a great model for picking Justices.”

As my colleague Ben Barton notes in his about-to-appear book, The Credentialed Court: Inside the Cloistered, Elite World of American Justice, the Supreme Court is becoming more and more isolated. Interestingly, back when the Justices rode circuit, as they did for roughly the first century, it was actually the branch that had the most contact with a wide spectrum of Americans.