Elena Kagan not a judge? Well, at least she went to law school.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has never been a judge, and some people think that’s a problem. “Her record is thin, there’s no doubt about that,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama, ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a Monday broadcast interview.

Well, at least she graduated from law school. (Harvard Law, 1986, if you want the specifics.) That makes her more credentialed than most of the 111 people who have served as US Supreme Court justices. A majority of them – 64 – never earned a law degree.

Yes, you read that right. More high court judges have not been JDs, than have. They never took first year Contracts. They never struggled with Constitutional Law I, only to be inspired by a curmudgeon of a professor with an eye for talent.

IN PICTURES: Justices with no prior judicial experience

No, they learned law the old fashioned way – on their own.

Let’s start from the top – it will be less confusing that way. While 64 Supreme Court justices did not go to law school, all Supreme Court justices in US history have been lawyers. Of a sort.

That apparent paradox can be explained by the fact that for much of the nation’s history the most common path to lawyerdom was simply to read law books, often while working in a practicing attorney’s office.

For instance, John Jay, the nation’s first chief justice, read law in a New York law office following his 1764 graduation from college. He was admitted to the bar in 1768.

Decoder’s ancestor Robert C. Grier read law while teaching school in the early 19th century. He passed the bar in 1817. Appointed an associate Supreme Court justice in 1846, he served on the high court for 24 years. (Served badly, we might add – historians rate him among the worst Supreme Court justices ever.)

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