President Obama should choose a non-judge to fill the seat on the Supreme Court left by retiring Justice David Souter, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday.
“Well, I personally would like to see us get away from you have to be a judge to be a Supreme Court justice,” Reid said during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show. “It think we’d be good — we could get a governor, we could get a senator or former senator, people with some real life experiences for a while rather than people who walk around in these black robes all the time.”
Some candidates for the high court from a political background have included Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D).
Reid also said he did not expect a Republican attempt to filibuster Obama’s nominee, and pointed out that many conservatives had fought against the filibuster of judicial nominations.
“It’s not the right time to be talking filibuster. There aren’t enough Republicans to do that,” the top Senate Democrat asserted. “The Republicans, when they put up this big battle on the nuclear option, one of their reasons for doing this is that they didn’t believe that judges should be filibustered. So I don’t know how they could do that intellectually, now come back and try to filibuster a judge.”