Page6 of 6 How can you get amateurs to make sound professional judgments? If you cant de that, how do you get amateurs to make sound judgments about the credentials and conclusions of professionals? There is no easy answer to this puzzle. The history of judicial use of history suggests it is not easy to turn sows ears into silk purses FINIS 12 We could try to slice this historical pickle in a more direct way: we could try to funnel state-of-the-art historical scholarship to the Supreme Court by putting state-of-the-art legal historians on the Supreme Court bench. For example, perhaps someone could persuade President George W. Bush(and the U.S Senate)to put Professors Richard Friedman, Roger Kirst, Thomas Davies, John Langbein, and Mirjan Damaska on that elevated bench. But this ridiculous little thought-experiment only to make it very clear that the question of judicial competence or incompetence in matters historical is not the only factor that has a fundamental bearing on the question of the appropriate role of the history (or histories)of the 18 century in 21 century constitutional adjudication. The thought-experiment should make us wonder, first, about the relative importance of historical knowledge for constitutional adjudication. Are there other forms of knowledge we want our Supreme Court Justices to have? If so, how important are those other forms of knowledge comparatively speaking-forms of knowledge such as mathematical knowledge, knowledge of wle probability theory, literary knowledge, knowledge of economics, sociological knowledge, knowledge about psychology and psychiatry, knowledge about computers, religious knowledge, knowledge of moral theory and common sense knowledge? The thought experiment suggests another obvious but nonetheless fundamental difficulty or family of difficulties If behavior in academic venues is any guide, any prudent bserver of American judicial behavior is required to entertain the cautionary thought that even a Court that is staffed entirely by eminent legal historians is likely to be riven both by dis and by disagreements about how historical"facts"and about which historical facts should be used in contemporary constitutional adjudication. Expertise in the historians craft will not necessarily produce consensus about many historical questions. It is even less likely that historical expertise will resolve fundamental disagreements about the proper relationship between tradition and constitutionPage 6 of 6 How can you get amateurs to make sound professional judgments? If you can’t do that, how do you get amateurs to make sound judgments about the credentials and conclusions of professionals? There is no easy answer to this puzzle. The history of judicial use of history suggests it is not easy to turn sow’s ears into silk purses.12 FINIS 12 We could try to slice this historical pickle in a more direct way: we could try to funnel state-of-the-art historical scholarship to the Supreme Court by putting state-of-the-art legal historians on the Supreme Court bench. For example, perhaps someone could persuade President George W. Bush (and the U.S. Senate) to put Professors Richard Friedman, Roger Kirst, Thomas Davies, John Langbein, and Mirjan Damaška on that elevated bench. But this ridiculous little thought-experiment only serves to make it very clear that the question of judicial competence or incompetence in matters historical is not the only factor that has a fundamental bearing on the question of the appropriate role of the history (or histories) of the 18th century in 21st century constitutional adjudication. The thought-experiment should make us wonder, first, about the relative importance of historical knowledge for constitutional adjudication. Are there other forms of knowledge we want our Supreme Court Justices to have? If so, how important are those other forms of knowledge comparatively speaking – forms of knowledge such as mathematical knowledge, knowledge of physics, knowledge of biology, knowledge of biochemistry, geographical knowledge, knowledge of probability theory, literary knowledge, knowledge of economics, sociological knowledge, knowledge about psychology and psychiatry, knowledge about computers, religious knowledge, knowledge of moral theory, and common sense knowledge? The thought experiment suggests another obvious but nonetheless fundamental difficulty or family of difficulties. If behavior in academic venues is any guide, any prudent observer of American judicial behavior is required to entertain the cautionary thought that even a Court that is staffed entirely by eminent legal historians is likely to be riven both by disputes over historical questions and by disagreements about how historical “facts” and about which historical facts should be used in contemporary constitutional adjudication. Expertise in the historian’s craft will not necessarily produce consensus about many historical questions. It is even less likely that historical expertise will resolve fundamental disagreements about the proper relationship between tradition and constitution