Slumdog Millionaire and the Supreme Court

First - I finally saw Slumdog Millionaire. Did anyone else feel like they were watching a Forrest Gump remake? I liked the film (but I also liked Forest Gump), but for most of the movie I really had this sense that I've seen this before and then it finally hit me.

Second - It felt to me like there were a lot of supreme court nominations recently (3 in the last 4 years). If you want actual information you could look here or you could keep reading my speculation based on no research. The last nomination prior to 2005 was in 1994. So if you are around my age then it's likely the first time you paid attention to nominations wasn't till 2005 and even if it wasn't, your experience is an 11 year stretch without any. Based on that experience you might expect nominations to be very rare.

But (based on guessing) no one gets on the supreme court before the age of 40 and most probably finish up by 80. So a justice keeps the job at most 40 years and if there are 9 of them you'd expect a nomination around every 4 years and probably more often since 40 years is the upper end. So the last 4 years have seen a fairly reasonable rate, it's the 11 years prior to that were odd and screwed up my sense of the supreme court justice turn over rate.

Thanks Steve for the correction.