Would-Be Federal Judges Are Flunking This Senator’s Judicial ‘Bar Exam’

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Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.

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I taught for 15 years, and these are the kinds of questions that I would expect my students to know the answer to.

People have been nominated for a lifetime position. And so we’ve got to put the best women and the best men that we can on the bench. That starts with knowing the law book from an L.L. Bean catalog.

— Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), in comments given to Bloomberg Law on the “pop quizzes” he gives to judicial nominees during their hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some judicial candidates have performed so poorly in response to the former adjunct law professor’s questions, referred to as the Kennedy bar exam, that they’ve withdrawn their nominations. “I’ve got plenty of new questions. I haven’t thought about some of them yet,” Kennedy said, “but I will.”

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Courts, Government, Quote of the Day, Senate Judiciary Committee