Should Souter’s chair be filled by a judge?

United States Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s decision to retire is not a great shock, but it is a big moment in the new administration.

It is a fairly recent notion that justices are selected from among sitting judges. Justices Harlan, White, Warren, Black and Douglas are among the many justices who were not from judicial ranks.

If a judge is selected, Sonia Sotomayor adds a second woman and a first Hispanic to the Court. She also has the odd honor of having been appointed to one court by George H.W. Bush and to another by Bill Clinton (though there is more to that story).

If any academic, then Elena Kagan or Cass Sunstein would seem logical choices. They both have distinguished records and close relations to President Obama.

But what if it were a politician or practicing lawyer as the president once suggested?

Any ideas?

Denis Hauptly
Vice President, Technology Strategy
Thomson Reuters Global Resources

Get Westcast podcasts

Get WestBlog by RSS

Get WestBlog by email

The path to innovation (Part 2)

This is a post about innovation from Denis Hauptly, vice president of Technology Strategy in Thomson Reuters Global Resources. Denis contributes to WestBlog monthly, and he is the author of “Something Really New,” which focuses on building a culture of innovation:

Let’s look at faucets.

How many do you have in your home? Count the laundry room, the yard, the one at the bottom of the water heater and so forth. You may have 10 or more.

Faucets are 4,000 years old. They work very well after all those millennia of design improvement. Or do they?

Well, from the perspective of the company that makes and sells faucets, they are near perfection. Turn a handle and the water flows. Washers used to be a major problem, but not so much anymore. The design now includes the ability to blend hot and cold water with one handle and use that same handle to adjust the temperature. Who could ask for more?

The customer could.

The path to innovation (Part 1)

This is a guest blog post about innovation from Denis Hauptly, vice president of Technology Strategy in Thomson Reuters Global Resources. Denis contributes to WestBlog monthly, and he is the author of “Something Really New” which focuses on building a culture of innovation:

There are two things that everyone knows are absolutely true about business today:

1. You must innovate, and
2. Innovation begins with understanding your customers

OK, now let’s go execute on that plan!

Except, of course, you can not execute on that plan. You have to go a bit further than that to have a practical, implementable approach to innovation. I will try to set out some of the basic outlines of such a plan. This is not a silver bullet but I believe it will improve your innovation efforts quickly and measurably and encourage your organization to go further than you thought possible.

Interactive innovation

Innovation is at the core of West and the legal businesses of Thomson Reuters. The people behind the products and services many of you use take great pride in thinking big and making things happen.

Denis Hauptly is one of those people.

He’s a vice president of Technology Strategy in Thomson Reuters Global Resources and has been with the company for more than 12 years. He’s also held a variety of positions in the federal courts and the United States Department of Justice. He has written four books and numerous articles on history and law. Hauptly’s latest book is “Something Really New” which focuses on building a culture of innovation.

We’ve asked Denis to contribute to WestBlog from time to time over the coming months and we’re pleased to kick off that conversation with some of his thoughts on creating an innovative workplace:

A long, long time ago (1954) in a galaxy far, far away (New Jersey) I watched Walt Disney (who, unlike Betty Crocker, was a real person) throw a ping pong ball into a room filled with mousetraps – each of which had a ping pong ball resting on it.

The first ping pong ball set off one of the mousetraps, which released a second ping pong ball which meant that two ping pong balls were loose and would soon hit two more mousetraps… and so on.

It was marvelous to see.