On Thursday, former Suffolk County Sheriff and Secretary of Public Safety Andrea Cabral joined Boston Public Radio to discuss a recentBoston Globe article highlighting a dilemma with Harvard Law graduates who do nOt seem particularly interested in clerking for under-qualified judges.
"When I first heard about it, I said ‘that makes sense to me,’” Cabral said. "You know, no one’s going to want to say on their resume that they clerked for a judge who’s never tried a case before… or who won’t answer whether Brown v Board of Education was correctly decided. This is not a deal sweetener if you’re going to try to get a legitimate job somewhere with non-extremists.”
In his three years as president, 158 judicial nominees put forward by Donald Trump were confirmed to the Federal bench, many of whom have been judged unfavorably by the American Bar Association.
"As long as you have certain views on abortion, and other issues that the federalist society deems worthy, they don’t actually mind if you’re unqualified,” Cabral said of the judges. “Because, A, it’s a lifetime appointment, and B… so you makes some bad law? Bad law gets hashed out in other places."
The Globe article, published last Thursday, raised concerns over whether the lack of educated graduates willing to work for Trump judges might exacerbate polarization in the courts. Cabral agreed with those concerns.
"It is a disgrace and a shame the number of wholly unqualified judges that... Trump’s nominated, [and] the Senate has just pushed through. But what you can say about them is that they are the genuine tabula rasa — they are the genuine blank slate. And a good clerk, a smart clerk, might be able to actually educate the judge that they clerk for,and since that person has a lifetime appointment, that is going to be the only opportunity to educate that judge."
"There is a part of me... that hopes that there are some hail and hearty law students that just rush into the breach and try to affect the process that way."
