In an interview taped Saturday night and set for broadcast on Monday, leading conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appears to be defending Harriet Miers against critics who say she doesn't have the qualifications to sit on the High Court.
"I think it's a good thing to have people from all sorts of backgrounds [on the Court]," Scalia tells CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, as the debate rages over Miers' lack of judicial experience.
Without mentioning the Bush nominee by name, the conservative legal icon said that the High Court needed someone who had never served as a judge to take the place of the late Justice William Rehnquist.
"There is now nobody with that [non judicial] background after the death of the previous chief," Scalia laments to Bartiromo.
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"And the reason that's happened, I think, is that the nomination and confirmation process has become so controversial, so politicized that I think a president does not want to give the opposition an easy excuse [to say] 'Well, this person has no judicial experience.'"
Scalia concludes: "I don't think that's a good thing. I think the Byron Whites, the Lewis Powells and the Bill Rehnquists have contributed to the court even though they didn't sit on a lower federal court."