ABA Rates 14 of the 185 Obama Judicial Nominees as "Not Qualified"

Volokh has an interesting discussion of the various issues this raises. First, I would probably guess that at least a few of the "not qualified" nominees are requests from Democratic Senators who have certain "pet" nominees.

More interesting than the ABA deal is the debate in the comments about what actually makes a person qualified to be a Federal District Court Judge. Would you prefer a district court judge with trial court litigation experience, or would you rather have a credentialed, tenured law professor who knows more of the substantive theory of the law?

I believe that litigation skills are transferable from one subject matter area to another. A district court judge needs to be able to understand how to run a contested case from the beginning to the end. That covers everything from discovery dispute, summary judgment motions, pre-trial motions, conducting the actual trial, handling post-trial motions, and a whole host of other things.

If you simply plug a “high intellect” transactional lawyer or law professor into the judgeship, you’re going to get a great deal of “on the job” training on the procedural side, and you’re still going to have to deal with them not knowing every area of substantive law. It just doesn’t make sense.

No one can know enough substantive areas of law to make up for neither knowing the basics of litigation skills nor having participated in a trial. If I had to pick a judge, I would take any lawyer who was tried 10 cases to a jury verdict over a tenured law professor any day of the week