Judicial Nomination Guide: The Obama Calculus

Note: The following is meant purely as a helpful guide to selecting nominees to the highest court in the land. A minimum of 10 points is required before you can declare a winning nominee.

If the candidate you are considering came from very humble economic origins, but went on to attend Ivy League universities, add two points.

If the candidate you are considering grew up in a single-parent household, add two points.

If the candidate's ethnicity coincides with an important ethnic demographic within your political party, add three points.

If the candidate possesses significant experience in the legal profession, add three points.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor's score of 10 points (2+2+3+3) thus qualifies her for nomination to the Supreme Court. Of course, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also would score a 10 according to this rubric, as Kimberly Strassel notes in today's Wall Street Journal:

"Justice Thomas ... lost his father, and was raised by his mother in a rural Georgia town, in a shack without running water, until he was sent to his grandfather. The same Justice Thomas who had to work every day after school, though he was not allowed to study at the Savannah Public Library because he was black. The same Justice Thomas who became the first in his family to go to college and receive a law degree from Yale."

But then-candidate Obama had the following to say about Thomas last year:

"I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation."

But bear in mind one final rule of the nomination calculus:

If the candidate in question satisfies all of the foregoing criteria but happens to believe that justice should be administered blindly, without "empathy" for particular litigants, based only on strict and narrow interpretations of the Constitution, subtract 11 points.