{"id":9788,"date":"2010-04-30T12:37:24","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T17:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=9788"},"modified":"2010-04-30T12:37:24","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T17:37:24","slug":"does-geography-affect-appointments-to-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/04\/does-geography-affect-appointments-to-the-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Geography Affect Appointments to the Supreme Court?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It certainly used to.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most obvious examples are those from the early 19th century.\u00a0 Appointments of new justices were once tied to the creation of new circuit courts.\u00a0 And that was for good reason:\u00a0 Circuit courts were not the intermediate courts of appeals of today (with few exceptions, the most notable of which were the \u201cMidnight Judges\u201d that served from 1801 until 1802); they were largely nisi<\/em> prius<\/em> courts, functioning alongside district courts, with only limited appellate review.\u00a0 But they did not have their own judges.\u00a0 Various combinations of justices from the Supreme Court and judges from the district courts sat to form the circuit courts.<\/p>\n

When Congress created the Seventh Circuit in 1807, therefore, which consisted of the new states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, it required that the new justice assigned to that seat hail from there.\u00a0 The result was Jefferson\u2019s appointment of Thomas Todd of Kentucky.\u00a0 There were reasons to require a Western man.\u00a0 After all, he would have to ride circuit there, despite the Herculean nature of the task at that time, and the Western states wanted a member of the Court who was familiar with their land laws.\u00a0 (Whether Todd satisfied that interest\u2014or any interest\u2014is open to debate; he has been labeled the Most Insignificant Justice, besting Gabriel Duval[l] for that title, but at least most of his opinions did involve land tenure, see <\/em>Frank H. Easterbrook, The Most Insignificant Justice: Further Evidence<\/em>, 50 U. Chi. L. Rev. 481 (1983).)\u00a0 Likewise, the appointments to the eighth, ninth, and tenth seats on the Court were consistent with the geography of their respective circuits.\u00a0 John Catron practiced in Tennessee (reorganized as part of the Eighth Circuit), John McKinley was a Senator from Alabama (in the Ninth Circuit), and Stephen Field, who later wrote for the majority in Pennoyer v. Neff<\/em>, was a California jurist (part of the Tenth Circuit at the time).\u00a0 The tradition thus continued, though Congress no longer saw the need to make it mandatory.<\/p>\n

But enough with 19th-century trivia.\u00a0 With the impending retirement of Justice Stevens, geography has returned to the discussion about the President\u2019s next appointment.\u00a0 And that raises the question: Why?\u00a0 This is no longer an era in which sitting justices ride circuit; but, more importantly, no region of the country continues to possess interests so unique that they must be represented by a justice on the Court.\u00a0 Modern travel and technology have muted many of the differences that once existed between North and South or East and West.\u00a0 Parochial interests do remain, but they are either slight or irrelevant here.<\/p>\n

In other words, concern for the Court\u2019s geographic diversity is nothing more than another factor on a (growing) list that makes up the identity politics that decides Court appointments today.\u00a0 And that is unfortunate.\u00a0 One might hope that we could at least pretend that an appointment is filled by the best candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It certainly used to. Perhaps the most obvious examples are those from the early 19th century.\u00a0 Appointments of new justices were once tied to the creation of new circuit courts.\u00a0 And that was for good reason:\u00a0 Circuit courts were not the intermediate courts of appeals of today (with few exceptions, the most notable of which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-history","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}