Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, a prominent constitutional scholar who taught President Barack Obama and supported his 2008 campaign, thinks Obama would be a great Supreme Court Justice after his presidential term is up.
Tribe made the comments during an interview with the law journal Coverage Opinions. “There are a lot of other reasons why Obama could someday end up a Supreme Court Justice,” the piece reads. “Obama has taught constitutional law. He is reported to be less than fond of political schmoozing. That is not a job requirement. And serving on the Supreme Court — thus in all three branches of the federal government — would have a huge impact on his legacy.”
Tribe enthusiastically agreed with the interviewer. “That’s not hard to envision,” he said. “He would make a first-rate Justice on every dimension that matters.”
Tribe is not the first law professor to float the idea. Prominent George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen said the same back in 2010 in an opinion piece for the Washington Post. “It would be unusual, but not difficult, for Obama to get himself on the Supreme Court,” Rosen wrote. “He could nominate himself to replace John Paul Stevens, for example, or he could gamble and promise Hillary Rodham Clinton that he won’t run for reelection in 2012 in exchange for a pledge of appointment to the next vacancy.”
A hypothetical Justice Obama would only be the second former president to join the nation’s highest court, after President-turned-Chief-Justice William Howard Taft.
[h/t Volokh Conspiracy]