A Times profile of potential Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan asks whether it matters that she has never been a judge.

Ms. Kagan has a glittering résumé. But it lacks the one qualification that every member of the current Supreme Court possesses: past judicial service. The possibility that she will be nominated has ignited a debate over what scholars call “the norm of prior judicial experience.”

Seems to me that Kagan has more judicial experience than some prior nominees—Clarence Thomas comes to mind—who were judges….