Can anyone be nominated as Chief Justice, or does one have to be an Associate Justice first?

Lots of Chief Justices have been appointed directly as Chief, Earl Warren, previously Governor of California, most recently.

Lots of Chief Justices have been appointed directly as Chief, Earl Warren, previously Governor of California, most recently.

Anyone. Hell, you don't even have to be a lawyer.

Here's a trivia question for you: which Chief was also President.

William Taft. He was also the fattest chief justice.

also the fattest president. story may be totally apocryphal, but the story is that he once got stuck in a tub in the WH.

I think Taft also had a specially made tub installed in the WH for his fat butt.

The Constitution is pretty quiet about the qualifications for the Supreme Court. I haven't looked at this issue in a while, but I seem to recall thinking once that a president could appoint a six-year old chimp to the Court. If the Senate bought into that, voila! Court of the Apes!

Don't have to be a judge or even a lawyer, either.

In Federalist No. 28 Hamilton argued that you must have half a brain, but later generations of structuralists argued persuasively that brainlike emanations in the penumbra of the skull were sufficient. Indeed, as one scholar put it, in song, the possession of functioning neurons could all too easily result in unproductive distraction:

I could wile away the hours
Conferrin' with the flowers
Consultin' with the rain
And my head I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts were busy hatchin'
If I only had a brain. . .

Modesty prevented the jurist who penned these apposite lines from ever revealing his identity, but the history of our nation is redolent with his equally wise opinions.