It’s worth understanding what is behind these kinds of opeds. They make perfect sense for a tenure review committee, or perhaps a think tank appointment. But they capture the worst of a century and a half of professionalization of the law and ... https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-09-26/amy-coney-barrett-deserves-to-be-on-the-supreme-court">https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opini...

2/ the professionalization of the elite legal academy. Barrett may be a brilliant mind - many who know her say so and I take their word for it. She may be a kind person. But these opeds manage a near total indifference or willed obliviousness to the fact that as ...

3/ constituted today the choices of a Supreme Court nominee have a profound effect on the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans, often interpose themselves into the legislative process on facially absurd grounds ( basically all the ACA court cases).

4/ This is especially the case with someone who is clearly an ideologue. These briefs of praise illustrate the way the elite legal academy has attempted to and in many ways succeeded in colonizing what is actually part of the federal government, part of a democratic ...

5/ republic. You can see this most clearly in the evolution of appointments. Virtually every nominee today, of both parties is either a law professor or a high ranking federal judge. Usually they’ve been both. It didn’t use to be that way. Regular lawyers, politicians and ...

6/ others used to get these appointments. There are definitely downsides to that. But it’s really not the top gig in the legal academy which is in many ways what that colonization has wrought.