BIDEN SHOULD NOMINATE JUDGES WHO BATTLED THE GOVERNMENT IN COURT.

• Author: Root, Damon
• Position: LAW

LIBERTARIANS ARE SURE to be unhappy with plenty of President Joe Biden's judicial picks. But there is one glimmer of hope on the courtroom front. The Biden team is looking to bring some much-needed professional diversity to the federal bench.

On December 22, incoming White House Counsel Dana Remus asked Democratic lawmakers to start identifying judicial candidates "whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench," such as criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, and civil rights litigators. That is welcome news.

As Cato Institute criminal justice scholar Clark Neily pointed out in Slate, there is a "wild imbalance" on the federal bench "between judges who used to represent the government in court and judges who used to challenge the government in court." Given that "nearly every court case pitting a lone citizen against the state represents a David-versus-Goliath fight for justice," Neily wrote, "to further stack the deck with judges who are far more likely to have earned their spurs representing Goliath than David is unfair to individual litigants and a bad look for the justice system as a whole."

That is one point on which libertarian and progressive legal activists can agree. "The federal courts have largely become peopled with lawyers who are...