Could Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wind up on the Supreme Court? How about Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan? Or Massachusetts Governor Patrick?

Senior Circuit Judge Bruce M. Selya isn’t privy to any secret information about who President-elect Obama is thinking of appointing if Supreme Court justices such as John Paul Stevens, 88, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, retire over the next four years.

But Selya, the only Rhode Islander on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has a hunch about the type of candidates Obama will consider. Since 1975, every justice appointed to the Supreme Court has been a “professional judge,” Selya said. But with a solid Democratic majority in place for Senate confirmation battles, Obama might pick high-profile people with no judicial experience — just as Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did, he said.

“I suggest to you,” Selya said, “that a President Obama is much more likely than any president in the last three decades to look for big-picture people — people with great stature outside of the courts — to sit on the Supreme Court.”

Selya spoke Friday during the New England Appellate Judges Conference, hosted by the Rhode Island Supreme Court at the Renaissance Providence Hotel.

He noted FDR appointed seven Supreme Court justices, including a senator from Alabama (Hugo Black), a Harvard Law School professor (Felix Frankfurter) and a former Michigan governor (Frank Murphy). All seven had little or no prior judicial experience, he said.

Likewise, Kennedy appointed two Supreme Court justices — Byron White, a deputy attorney general and former football star, and Arthur Goldberg, a labor secretary. Neither had any prior judicial experience, Selya said.

But since 1975, “there has not been a single person — not a single person — appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States who could not be classified as a professional judge,” Selya said. “Indeed, we’ve reached the point in our history where for the first time since this republic was formed — the first time — every single member of the Supreme Court is an alumnus of the United States courts of appeals.”

What accounts for this change? Selya suggested one factor is the increasing length and complexity of the confirmation process. Also, he said, “It’s so much easier now for senators and interest groups, etc., to pull up information about what a prospective nominee may have said in his valedictory speech when he graduated from junior high school.”

So why wouldn’t Obama pick professional judges?

Selya said Obama, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, is one of the first presidents since James Madison to think of himself as a constitutional scholar. Also, Selya, who was appointed by President Reagan, said “whether or not we as individuals subscribe to his political beliefs and ideology, [Obama] is a big-picture, outward-looking sort of person.”

But most important, Selya said, “I think with the advantage of having a very solid [Democratic] majority in the Senate as insurance for confirmation fights if and to the extent they occur, President Obama will enjoy the luxury of making the big-picture choices.”

Certainly, some “big-picture” nominees have produced wise jurisprudence. I was reminded of an example recently when, in another context, Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Procaccini quoted one of FDR’s choices, Justice Black, who wrote: “Freedom to speak and write about public questions is as important to the life of our government as is the heart to the human body.”

efitzpat@projo.com