The author of a letter published Feb. 5 castigates President Biden for including only 13 percent of Americans during a Supreme Court justice search. Given that likely candidates – lawyers – only make up about .05 percent of all Americans, you play the hand you’re dealt.

The writer, Ronald Currier, asked, “Aren’t we all created equal?” The answer, of course, is yes. Our achievements once created, however, are the determinant of one’s fitness for membership on the court.

In 1980, then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan pledged to nominate “the most qualified woman I can possibly find” to the court. The Great Communicator had just excluded roughly 92 percent of all lawyers at that time, as only about 8 percent were women. The senators must have been fine with the search parameters, as Sandra Day O’Connor’s confirmation vote was 99-0, in a quite speedy at the time 33 days from nomination!

For its three Supreme Court nominees, the previous administration used its standby inclusion-exclusion filter noted by then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016, “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society.” Publicly available data indicate that about 60,000 lawyers are members of the society, including each Trump court appointee. However, their membership represents only about 5 percent of the .05 percent of Americans (about 1.33 million) who are lawyers!

I can’t imagine the discomfort this probably caused Mr. Currier, at that time and to this day, as six of the nine Supreme Court justices are current or former Federalist Society members. For my money, I’ll go with Democrat (noun) Joe Biden’s much more democratic (adjective) and inclusive search.

Mike Del Tergo
Falmouth

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