From your Wikipedia link:

In addition to other task forces, the Ninth Circuit�s report found that many women believe that a major hindrance to attaining a judicial position is the lack of women �power players� in the connected �old boys clubs� that often influence judicial appointments.

Women judges and women lawyers attribute male-domination of the judiciary in large part to the exclusion of women from the networks that influence judicial appointments. Women lawyers attribute the small number of women appointed to bench and bar committees to the exclusion of women from formal and informal selection processes. A large proportion of women lawyers believe that men have a better chance than women to be promoted to law firm partnerships and to equivalent positions in public law organizations. See Sandra Day O�Connor, The Effects of Gender in the Federal Courts: The Final Report of the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force: The Quality of Justice, 67 S. Cal. L. Rev. 745, 786-87 (1994).

A recent panel discussion held at Columbia Law School which included Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and other women judges, elicited this response from a former Bush (41) administration employee that echoes the task forces findings:

My experience working on federal judicial appointments during the last administration, and this really surprised me with respect to gender, was that, still in this day and age, there was often a conflict between a male candidate, generally a white male candidate, who, although sometimes quite well-qualified, sometimes not in conventional terms, had much stronger political, and sort of patronage, political connections--you know he had been a party chair, state party chair, or contributed in a significant way to the political decision-maker at the state-level--versus a woman with spectacular educational and experiential qualifications. So that was often a real tension in a particular choice, and invariably the patronage politics would win out over the straight qualification. So I guess it led to my conclusion that, absent the sort of political force of identity politics that is first woman, wanting to put a first woman in a district or a circuit that has never had one, or wanting to just have more women or more African-Americans on the bench that women would be even further behind in terms of their representation on the federal bench, even in this day and age.

In a way, this remains a chicken and egg question; until there are a significant number of women in high positions in government and commerce, the connections needed to attain government appointments and judgeships remains in the hands of the entrenched male establishment. The recommendation put forward to remedy the problem is most succinctly put forward by Justice Ginsburg:

�Women hold up half the sky and they will do so in our courts. They need no favors. They need only equal respect for their talent (and equal sharing by men of the job of bringing up the next generation).�

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lucounu,

You ask: "Based on what?"

The entirety of all of the qualifications required for "Judges of the supreme Court" is found in Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of The United States, where it states: "... ; and he (the President) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: ..."

In other words, there are no qualifications � none whatsoever, except somehow being able to impress the President. Any person is as qualified as any other person according to the qualifications stated in the U.S. Constitution, and no other qualifications exist anywhere else.

Have you ever heard of William O. Douglas? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas
Quote: "Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939. At the age of forty, Douglas was one of the youngest justices to be confirmed to the Supreme Court."

Selection criteria does not concern itself with whether "one has achieved maximum growth in legal knowledge, understanding and skill," nor should it. What matters is wisdom, and nothing else. All of the "legal knowledge, understanding and skill" in the world is worthless if it does not come coupled with surpassing wisdom. Given a choice between a legal scholar and a wise person, I would pick a wise person to become one of the "Judges of the supreme Court" every time.

lucounu, my contention is this: female wisdom is significantly different than male wisdom, because its perspective is significantly different. As it is, the U.S. Supreme Court is deficient in female wisdom, and the entire nation suffers as a result of that deficiency. The only way to permanently cure the national sickness caused by the deficiency is to ratify my proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Steven A. Sylwester