Dr. Phil for Supreme Court.

David Brooks discusses the rise of the meritocratic Organization Kid who shines in bureacratic times, as perfectly embodied in judicial nominee Elena Kagan:

Kagan has apparently wanted to be a judge or justice since adolescence (she posed in judicial robes for her high school yearbook). There was a brief period, in her early 20s, when she expressed opinions on legal and political matters. But that seems to have ended pretty quickly.

She has become a legal scholar without the interest scholars normally have in the contest of ideas. She’s shown relatively little interest in coming up with new theories or influencing public debate.

Her publication record is scant and carefully nonideological. She has published five scholarly review articles, mostly on administrative law and the First Amendment. These articles were mostly on technical and procedural issues.

One scans her public speeches looking for a strong opinion, and one comes up empty. In 2005, for example, she delivered a lecture on women and the legal profession. If ever there was a hot-button issue, it’s the mommy wars, the tension between professional success and family pressures. Kagan deftly summarized some of the research showing that while women do well in law school, they are not as likely to rise to senior positions at major firms. But she didn’t exactly take a stand. “What I hope to do is start a conversation,” she said.

Her recommendations were soporific: “Closer study of the differences across practice settings, linked to the experiences of women in those settings, could help us to improve workplaces throughout the profession.” Furthermore, “Charting a course for the profession in these times will require sustained cooperation between practitioners with the experience and wisdom to identify problems and implement solutions, and academic researchers with the ability to generate the systematic and unbiased research on which these solutions must be based.”
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About a decade ago, one began to notice a profusion of Organization Kids at elite college campuses. These were bright students who had been formed by the meritocratic system placed in front of them. They had great grades, perfect teacher recommendations, broad extracurricular interests, admirable self-confidence and winning personalities.

If they had any flaw, it was that they often had a professional and strategic attitude toward life. They were not intellectual risk-takers. They regarded professors as bosses to be pleased rather than authorities to be challenged. As one admissions director told me at the time, they were prudential rather than poetic.

If you listen to people talk about Elena Kagan, it is striking how closely their descriptions hew to this personality type.

Nevermind whether girl or boy, straight or gay, Jew or Gentile: the legal questions looming ahead based on social justice and economic redistribution policies necessitate placing the best minds on the Court. The ones in it, not for the prize, but for the work; the ones who understand that the Court's reasoning and legitimacy indeed will define this American century, and who is on there now matters more than ever.

Conversation starters like Oprah have their place, but it's not a place for trying out a judicial career absent any experience calling balls and strikes in the littler leagues. I betcha even William Rehnquist would agree, were he still alive and writing opinions.

Brooks again:

Kagan’s sole display of passion came during her defense of her decision to reinstate a policy that banned the military from using Harvard Law School’s main career office for recruiting. But even here, she argues that her position was not the product of any broad opinions. She was upholding the antidiscrimination regulations of Harvard University. She told the Senate in written answers to questions during her confirmation hearings for solicitor general, “The position I took does not entail a view on the exclusion of R.O.T.C. from college campuses, and I never expressed a position on the exclusion of R.O.T.C. from Harvard.”

What we have is a person whose career has dovetailed with the incentives presented by the confirmation system, a system that punishes creativity and rewards caginess. Arguments are already being made for and against her nomination, but most of this is speculation because she has been too careful to let her actual positions leak out.

There’s about to be a backlash against the Ivy League lock on the court. I have to confess my first impression of Kagan is a lot like my first impression of many Organization Kids. She seems to be smart, impressive and honest — and in her willingness to suppress so much of her mind for the sake of her career, kind of disturbing.

We all saw what the Organization Kid mentality -- rewards first, damn the overall system -- did to Wall Street and her countrymen's confidence in blind investments.

Imagine what this mentality will do for the legitimacy of our judicial system, and how it will affect everyday lives for years to come until the work of such Organization Kids is eventually unraveled and shown up as the tangled mess it is.