“One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.”

Downey, Maureen (interviewer), "Teaching introverts: Do schools prefer big talkers to big thinkers?", The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 5, 2016.

11 How. St. Tr. 1213.
Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686)

[Oskar, Garcia, Nev. Supreme Court: Ashjian's name stays on ballot, Associated Press, October 6, 2010]
About

5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 178
Marbury v. Madison (1803)

As quoted in "Gore Sees No Reason to Run" by Patrick Healy in The New York Times (25 May 2007) http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/gore-sees-no-reason-to-run/.

Dissent, Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393 (1932).
Judicial opinions
Context: Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right... This is commonly true even where the error is a matter of serious concern, provided correction can be had by legislation. But in cases involving the Federal Constitution, where correction through legislative action is practically impossible, this court has often overruled its earlier decisions. The court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: 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. These considerations apprize us, that the Government can have no great option between fit characters; and that a temporary duration in office, which would naturally discourage such characters from quitting a lucrative line of practice to accept a seat on the Bench, would have a tendency to throw the administration of justice into hands less able, and less well qualified, to conduct it with utility and dignity.

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

" Excerpts From Interview With Chief Justice Burger on Role of the Supreme Court http://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/04/archives/excerpts-from-interview-with-chief-justice-burger-on-role-of-the.html", The New York Times (July 4, 1971).