Rick Hills is at it again.  Over at PrawfsBlawg, he's up to his old tricks of trying to argue that the law professors should stop ripping each others' heads off and start supporting each other for judicial appointments.  Remember the last time, when he proposed the lawprof "non-aggression pact?"

Here are the terms of the pact: Law profs agree to support any academic appointment to the federal district or appellate bench, full stop. Left law profs will endorse, say, Professor Doug Kmiec for the Ninth Circuit when a Republican occupies the White House; Right law profs will endorse, for instance, Dean Elena Kagan for the D.C. Circuit when a Democrat occupies the White House.

Despite my calm and thoughtful explanation of why this wasn't a great idea, Hills has been emboldened by the unanticipated support of another lawprof, Carl Tobias, over at Findlaw, who presents a relatively short piece on why lawprofs would make particularly good appellate judges.

Much of the work that law professors undertake strikingly resembles the responsibilities that appellate judges discharge. For example, when conducting scholarship, academics objectively analyze, synthesize and criticize a series of case precedents, attempt to evaluate relevant legal issues from a "big picture" viewpoint, and proffer suggestions for improvements in the law. Appellate judges, in turn, frequently read, evaluate and synthesize a line of opinions and apply their legal reasoning to the facts of specific cases.

Just so we're clear, this addresses only one aspect of Hills' proposal, that lawprofs are particularly well suited to be appellate judges, and not the other aspect involving lawprofs ignoring each others ideological positions by sitting silently as part of a non-aggression pact. 

I've no doubt that there are some lawprofs who would make great judges.  I've no doubt that some would be awful.  But the blanket argument that lawprofs should be a feeder job to the appellate bench is not just problematic to real lawyers, but not well received by other lawprofs.

Doug Berman says:

I fear that too many modern legal scholars, perhaps especially many modern constitutional scholars, tend to give far too little attention and thought to a broad array of criminal justice issues that regularly occupy the day-to-day work of the federal judiciary.  Put another way, I fear that too many criminal justice issues tend to get second-class treatment in the modern legal academy.  I would hate to have a federal appellate bench filled with academics inclined to give criminal justice cases second-class treatment on appeal.

Orin Kerr says:

Perhaps, but there are also reasons to be cautious about this approach. To get a flavor, see this post from back in 2005 about whether law professors should be picked for the Supreme Court:

My instinct is that extensive experience as a law professor probably isn't very good training for service as a Supreme Court Justice.
Here's my thinking. As most practicing lawyers know, academia can be a little bit, well, quirky. Law professors generally are rewarded for being clever, or for catching a wave of fashionable ideas and writing a lot about them. Within the academy, it's frequently better to be gloriously wrong than modestly right.
In my opinion, the qualities of a good Justice are very different. I side with Learned Hand on this one: "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." Being fashionable, exceedingly clever, or gloriously wrong aren't assets for judges.

After Hills' first stab at this idea, fellow PrawfsBlawger Paul Horwitz said:

It is possible that law professors are less likely to be "corrupt" than these other lawyers, depending on how you define the term, if for no other reason than that they are less likely to be worldly, or at least successfully worldly. But there are all kinds of ways for judges to be corrupt. One of those, and the most important, is to lack impartiality; and I see no reason for assuming that law professors will be impartial than any other lawyer, particularly once you factor in partiality based on political ideology.

An anonymous commenter at PrawfsBlawg says:

Are you kidding me? Under this "logic," the entire legal academic community would have had to support Yale professor Robert Bork's appt. to the Court! (Or how do you feel about Boalt's John Yoo appointment to the federal judiciary?) Come on.

According to Rick Hills, I called him "elitist".  Nu uh.  It was more along the lines of "nutsy-fagan".  I try to avoid words that have three syllables in only seven letters.  That's probably why he didn't include a link to my post, so that no one would notice that he's put scholarly-type words in my mouth, the Brute.  My favorite part of my response was this:

And if the disconnect is bad at the trial level, the appellate level can be totally disconnected from reality.  It's like explaining the flavor of food you've never tasted. 

I don't doubt that there are some lawprofs, with adequate real world experience and who can withstand appropriate ideological vetting, who would make superb appellate judges.  But to contend that lawprofs, per se, make for better appellate judges, and to then argue that the rest of the academy should keep their traps shut and support one of their own, is just, well, nuts.

It should be noted, of course, that I have a horse in this race.  Since I represent real people who might have a case that comes before one of these appellate courts, it's in my professional interest to have judges sitting on the appellate bench who have some degree of recognition that their doctrinal love ultimately impacts actual human beings.  Someone has to stand up for people.