WI: President Carter nominates Ted Kennedy to the SCOTUS

What if Justice Potter Stewart decides he wants to "spend more time with his grandchildren" two years earlier and retires from the court in June of 1979. At that time Ted Kennedy was considering running against Carter in 1980 and was leading Carter in the polls by double digits. What if Carter decides that a good way to avoid facing Kennedy in the primaries is to nominate Kennedy to the Supreme Court. Kennedy being head of the the judiciary committee would be certain to be confirmed by his senate colleagues. Would a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land be enough to convince Kennedy to not run for president?

Would Kennedy accept Carter's offer? Would Kennedy want to leave the senate (he knew even if he lost the nomination to Carter in 1980 he'd still be able to return to the senate)? If he did become Justice Ted Kennedy what would the senate be like for the next 30 years without him? What would the court be like for the following 30 years with Kennedy? Would Kennedy eventually become disillusioned with the court? Would he feel stuck there for the 12 years of Reagan/Bush not wanting them to choose his successor if he resigned to run for senate again? Would he resign once Clinton became president or would he as a justice have ran against Bush in 1988?

It would have been difficult for Kennedy to turn the job down. I mean even if he did beat Carter and Reagan he could have only been president for 8 years max (many think he didn't really want to be POTUS anyway). But a seat on the Supreme Court would be lifetime appointment and he was 47 years old at the time. And he wouldn't have to keep running for re-election like he did in the senate.
 
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There is no requirement you even be a lawyer to serve, though obviously all justices have had legal education. But many senators have been nominated.
 
What if Justice Potter Stewart decides he wants to "spend more time with his grandchildren" two years earlier and retires from the court in June of 1979. At that time Ted Kennedy was considering running against Carter in 1980 and was leading Carter in the polls by double digits. What if Carter decides that a good way to avoid facing Kennedy in the primaries is to nominate Kennedy to the Supreme Court. Kennedy being head of the the judiciary committee would be certain to be confirmed by his senate colleagues. Would a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land be enough to convince Kennedy to not run for president?

Would Kennedy accept Carter's offer? Would Kennedy want to leave the senate (he knew even if he lost the nomination to Carter in 1980 he'd still be able to return to the senate)? If he did become Justice Ted Kennedy what would the senate be like for the next 30 years without him? What would the court be like for the following 30 years with Kennedy? Would Kennedy eventually become disillusioned with the court? Would he feel stuck there for the 12 years of Reagan/Bush not wanting them to choose his successor if he resigned to run for senate again? Would he resign once Clinton became president or would he as a justice have ran against Bush in 1988?

It would have been difficult for Kennedy to turn the job down. I mean even if he did beat Carter and Reagan he could have only been president for 8 years max (many think he didn't really want to be POTUS anyway). But a seat on the Supreme Court would be lifetime appointment and he was 47 years old at the time. And he wouldn't have to keep running for re-election like he did in the senate.

Carter making such an offer is extremely and profoundly unlikely. If Carter made such an offer it would fuel the fire, so to speak of Kennedy's desire to run against Carter.
 
Kennedy being head of the the judiciary committee would be certain to be confirmed by his senate colleagues.
Would he? Going from memory he was a middle of the class graduate, spent a couple of years as an assistant district attorney - during which he was out of the country a fair bit on 'fact finding' tours - to use up time, and then walked into his brother's old senate seat as soon as he was old enough. I'd be rather surprised if people didn't start asking questions about his knowledge of the law and qualifications, even if there are no specific ones.


Earl Warren was a Governor, for chrissakes. Why not?
He was also a district attorney for fourteen years, Attorney General of California for four years after that, and then became governor of California for a decade. Stacked against roughly a year and a half as an assitant district attorney, who wasn't there all the time, I'd say that Warren comes out rather ahead.
 
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The court would look very different

Bush v Gore assuming the case would even happen would go differently. A lot of decisions have been 5-4. Who would turn down an offer like that anyway?
 
Would he? Going from memory he was a middle of the class graduate, spent a couple of years as an assistant district attorney - during which he was out of the country a fair bit on 'fact finding' tours - to use up time, and then walked into his brother's old senate seat as soon as he was old enough. I'd be rather surprised if people didn't start asking questions about his knowledge of the law and qualifications, even if there are no specific ones.

True and as a result of his stormy confirmation hearings I can imagine that the word kennedy could take on a new meaning:

Kennedy

Etymology
From Edward M. Kennedy, United States Senator and rejected United States Supreme Court nominee.

Verb
Kennedy (third-person singular simple present kennedys, present participle kenneding, simple past and past participle kennedyed)
-1- (US, politics) To defeat a judicial nomination through a concerted attack on the nominee's character, background and philosophy.
 
I think you need to be an actual judge in order to sit on the Supreme Court. Can Ted Kennedy even be nominated?

You don't need to be a judge. Earl Warren and Felix Frankfurter were not judges. The constitution says nothing about qualifications for the supreme court.
 
I don't think Ted Kennedy wanted to be on the Supreme Court. If he did accept, he is much more liberal than Sandra Day O Conner. abAs was mentioned earlier, among the cases that goes differently is Bush v Gore.
f From what Iknow we get this:
2001 - 2009 Al Gore
2009 - 2013. Mitt Romney
2013 - Barack Obama
 
He was qualified for the Court; Hugo Black was also a sitting senator when nominated.

Kennedy might not get confirmed -- rank and file Republicans detested him, so their Senators would be under pressure to vote no. His views exemplified everything about the Warren Court that had infuriated Republicans, so they would be able to find plenty of ammunition. They might also feel the need to reject a Democratic nominee as revenge for the failed Haynesworth and Carswell nominations.
 
Carter making such an offer is extremely and profoundly unlikely. If Carter made such an offer it would fuel the fire, so to speak of Kennedy's desire to run against Carter.

I see this as the most likely scenario. Kennedy gets pissed that Carter's trying to carrot-and-stick him and probably runs harder against the President. I mean, think about it really, this shows 2 things: 1) Carter is sufficiently worried about losing to Kennedy in the primaries that he's willing to do anything to get the man to not run, and 2) Carter think Kennedy is a man of no principle who can be bought off. With regards to the number 1 up there, the American people aren't going to particularly like Carter playing politics with the Supreme Court, either, and there will be backlash against him in a big way. I think this would blow up in Carter's face in a big, big way.

If, for some reason, Teddy accepts, it may very well end both of their careers. Carter plays politics with a Supreme Court nomination and Ted Kennedy's past is going to get paraded around by his enemies in the senate. Carter loses reelection, Kennedy is embarrassed and might have to "retire."

Neither man is such a bad politician that he would do something so stupid as this.
 
He was qualified for the Court; Hugo Black was also a sitting senator when nominated.

Kennedy might not get confirmed -- rank and file Republicans detested him, so their Senators would be under pressure to vote no. His views exemplified everything about the Warren Court that had infuriated Republicans, so they would be able to find plenty of ammunition. They might also feel the need to reject a Democratic nominee as revenge for the failed Haynesworth and Carswell nominations.


He had good relationships with many of his Republican colleagues and the senate back then was very different back then. Plus I doubt some of those Republican senators would be eager to expose the skeletons in Kennedy's closet considering many of them had some skeletons in their own closets. I doubt somebody like Strom Thurmond would've wanted people (especially South Carolina voters) finding out about the black child he fathered out of wedlock. The worst thing they could've thrown at Kennedy about his moral character was Chappaquiddick and the public had already known about that for years.
 
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