It’s no longer enough to choose candidates for the nation’s highest court with perfect résumés who mouth the principles of originalism. They must have shown their courage in fighting for those principles, especially when it has cost them personally.
Great men do not audition to get picked as the next great man. They are already in the arena. They are already carrying burdens, taking fire, making arguments, and paying prices. Great offices find them because they have shown themselves worthy. That is as true of the Supreme Court as anywhere else in our constitutional order.
The Court bears a heavy responsibility. It “labors under the obligation to succeed,” as the legal scholar Alexander Bickel wrote in The Least Dangerous Branch (1986). So do the men who would sit on it. The office of Supreme Court justice is too weighty to be treated as the capstone of a perfectly curated career. If a man wants the office badly, that is not a qualification—it may be a warning sign.
The future of Supreme Court selection should not be framed as a choice between judicial independence and constitutional courage. We need both. We need justices who are independent from presidents, parties, editorial boards, and elite social pressure. But we also need justices who will do what the law requires when the case is hard, the question is politically charged, and the consequences are real. The right answer to a timid judiciary is not a political judiciary. It is a judiciary of courageous constitutionalists in the model of Justice Clarence Thomas.
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