He wants Americans to consider—in advance of yet another tedious confirmation hearing—the possibility that judging is really, really hard and only special people should get to do it.
This is not false, though "special people" does not mean there is but some handful of "qualified" people out there, but it is not the core message I got from the speech, one I already opined about here. The basic message to me is that interpreting the Constitution is a complex enterprise. Judges aren't the only one who do that. Legislators, for instance, swear or affirm to uphold the Constitution (Art. VI) as do executive and military personnel.
The idea that judges are a special breed is a long held sentiment, explaining in part why they are part of a separate branch of government, and have life tenure in the federal system. Edward Coke, eventually Lord Chief Justice of England, in the 17th Century spoke about how judges are skilled in an "artificial reason" that provides them with special dispensation to interpret the law.
Coke was an important influence on our own system of government, including the idea that there is a higher law that even the legislature must follow, the courts having a special role in ensuring that. This is part of a "republican" form of government, secured by Art. IV of the Constitution and honored by school children each time they say the Pledge. In a republic, simple democracy doesn't rule. Certain institutions, including judicial review, are in place. Federalist No. 39 lists life tenure as a recognized aspect of republican government: "according to the most respectable and received opinions on the subject, the members of the judiciary department are to retain their offices by the firm tenure of good behavior."
The importance of the federal judiciary, including judicial review and life tenure, was cited by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78. Part of it was that judging is both hard and specialized:
There is yet a further and a weightier reason for the permanency of the judicial offices, which is deducible from the nature of the qualifications they require. It has been frequently remarked, with great propriety, that a voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free government. To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable bulk, and must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them. Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge.
Federalist No. 37 underlined that the meaning of the Constitution as a whole would only be understood, imperfectly, by experience:
All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications. Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other adds a fresh embarrassment. The use of words is to express ideas. Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them. But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas.
The flexibility of the instrument is part of its value. When new "particular discussions and adjudications" put a new light on the basic principles and terms, for instance, there is an ability to learn and advance. Madison eventually accepted popular approval of a national bank; Hamilton changed his mind on Senate approval of removal of federal officers. The imperfect instrument also can be interpreted in many different ways, even if one side or the other likes to toss out comments about how stupid the other side is.
But, no one promised us a rose garden. Life is a struggle ... self-government is no easier. Judging and governing is for adults. Too many children out there.