Remarks and observations concerning American law and cultural studies as it relates to courses taken by students in the University of Osnabrück's and University of Münster's foreign law programs.
Matt LeMieux
22 July 2009
Can Non-Lawyers Judge a Judge?
Students in most of my classes have at some time or another become familiar with how the United States chooses its federal court judges. The short story: the President appoints and the Senate confirms. Students also know that there are no formal requirements needed to become a federal judge, other than being nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. In theory, the qualifications of the judicial nominee are to be tested via the Senate confirmation process. However, many of the members of the committee who question the nominee are not trained lawyers. This begs the question: How can non-lawyers judge whether a nominee is qualified to be a federal judge? David Ingram at Law.com has more on this.