Montini: A perfect pick for Supreme Court? Napolitano

Now that the great Arizonan and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that President Barack Obama should name a nominee to succeed the late Antonin Scalia the choice seems obvious:

Former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Seriously.

Honest.

I…am…not…kidding.

Name a more qualified candidate?

Napolitano is the president of the University of California.

Before that she was the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. (Confirmed by a voice vote of the Senate not long after Obama assumed the presidency.)

Before that she was elected governor as a Democrat in our predominantly Republican state. Twice.

Before that she was elected Attorney General in that same state.

Before that she served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona.

And there’s more.

Prior to her public life Napolitano worked as an attorney and protégé for legendary Phoenix lawyer John P. Frank, a giant in civil rights litigation.

Frank was an adviser to the attorneys (among them the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall) who helped to abolish school segregation in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case.

Frank and partner John Flynn (another legal legend in Arizona) represented Ernesto Miranda before the Supreme Court in a case that led to the legal requirement that police officers advise suspects of their rights.

Sure, the Senate Judiciary Committee would grill Napolitano over her time with DHS, saying she didn’t do enough, for example, to secure the border.

She'd debate that, and could point out that while governor of Arizona she sent a letter to the federal government demanding repayment of the $118 million the state spent incarcerating thousands of undocumented immigrants.

She’s more than qualified.

And if the senate chose not to confirm her, well, she gets to return to a pretty good job.

If senators DID confirm her, however, the country would get a justice with the kind of multi-dimensional real-world experience that’s rare on the Supreme Court.

Although they might have to rearrange the seating chart, keeping Napolitano as far away as possible from Justice Clarence Thomas.

At Thomas’ 1991 confirmation hearing he was accused of sexually harassing a lawyer named Anita Hill when they worked together at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Hill was represented at the hearing by John P. Frank and his young associate, Janet Napolitano.