Larry Tribe lays it out simply, as reported in the New York Times..

“I think part of the advantage I have is I’m not a lawyer,” Mr. Gingrich said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And so as a historian I look at the context of the judiciary and the Constitution in terms of American history.”

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said a lack of legal training was helpful only up to a point.

“The advantage of not being a lawyer is the ability to look outside the box,” Professor Tribe said. “The disadvantage is to be so woefully ignorant of what’s inside the box.”

“There are times, especially times of national panic,” Professor Tribe said, “when both of the elected branches are prepared to defy core constitutional protections of human rights and only a truly independent branch, one that has no need to worry about the election returns, can be counted on to hold the line and preserve our basic constitutional commitments.”

Judge Kevin Burke, head of the American Judges Association, has also been on this issue with detailed historical analysis, in the Minneapolis Post, with follow up here.