John Paul Stevens has announced that he will definitely retire during Obama’s first term in office. I suspect he’ll do it this year. I’ve heard that he hasn’t hired the usual number of assistants. I kind of wish he’d wait, but it looks like we’ll have fewer senators to confirm a replacement next year than we have now. Stevens is the most important liberal member of the bench, and replacing him with someone liberal is an important goal. However, in an election year, the Republicans are sure to attempt a filibuster of any nominee we put up (for fundraising purposes, if nothing else). I don’t have a wish list because I haven’t delved into various judges’ records. Arlen Specter has a wish list that he plans on presenting to the president. But he doesn’t seem interested in seating another circuit judge. If we don’t appoint a circuit judge, who should we appoint?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Arlen Specter has a wish list that he plans on presenting to the president.
And Snarlin’ Arlen think he should get catered to, why? Another thing. Does Obama think the base will get fired up if he nominates Elena Kagan?
They probably would if it came down to EK vs any of the centrist/center-right people Snarlin’ would probably want.
Actually I’m not sure why the base wouldn’t be fairly happy with EK in any event, though I’m sure her record isn’t entirely 100% progressively pure enough for some. From what I’ve read, she’s plenty acceptable. Very smart too, not just center-left/lib in her leanings.
Sounds like you never read any Greenwald. If you care about civil liberties, she isn’t for you.
Actually I do read GG frequently, though I skipped his recent Scotus piece (because it struck me as wasting more time worrying unnecessarily about a Justice Cass Sunstein–not gonna remotely happen, imo) wherein, as I look back now, he also mentioned Kagan in the negative.
Fair enough, though I can see where in EK’s confirmation to SG, she might have wanted to line up with the new admin’s views, so it could be that some of her stated record on liberties was for immediate political purposes.
See Harold Koh, for instance, someone GG mentions as probably being acceptable to the libs. He recently stated in agrees with the legality of US drone attacks into Pakistan and other countries, all in the name of the war on terror of course.
Pam Karlan: A young lib legal scholar — now she might (possibly) be better than Kagan (though I’ve never read her work on the 2000 election a huge issue for me). One problem might be that she could be deemed too liberal to get 51 Dem senators; the other could be her out personal status.
Generally, if we can go solid liberal, I’m aboard. But it has to be a nom who has a realistic shot of being confirmed, not just someone who meets someone’s political purity test. And young enough, too.
But it has to be a nom who has a realistic shot of being confirmed, not just someone who meets someone’s political purity test.
Have you been paying attention? The Republicans would even filibuster someone like Kagan, if she were to be nominated.
Clinton played the Republican dominated Congress headed by Gingrich in the 90s as obstructionist and eventually won when the US government was shut down. And it may have cost Gingrich his leadership post.
The Republicans today are even more obstructionist than the Gingrich led Congress. But this time, they seem to be getting away with it. Why?
But this time, they seem to be getting away with it. Why?
This is a rhetorical question, right?
Pam Karlan. Strong liberal, and she’s a lesbian.
Excuse me. We’re choosing someone from Arlen Specter’s list? Please. I hope it’s Charles Ogletree but I think it will be Diane Wood. Pam Karlan would also be a great choice.
Prediction: Obama, against his better judgment, chooses a candidate primarily as an exercise in identity politics in an attempt to close the enthusiasm gap going into the fall, a gap that nominating another straight white man would cause to re-open after the passing of ACA.
The nomination scrapes through the SJC, the GOP-promised filibuster is defeated by a one-vote margin, but the nomination itself is killed on the floor by the usual nominally Democratic Senate suspects, led by Joe Lieberman, and by Blanche Lincoln in a revenge vote against the left wing of the party.
She got her appeals court job on the advocacy of Senator Paul Simon and that’s a pretty good recommendation.
Right. She’s on the short-list. But my question was who else besides circuit judges?
It all depends. Is Obama feeling bi-partisan again?
I predict that we get another Catholic and Roe v Wade will be overturned. At the very least, he will appoint someone acceptable to Republicans and turn the court even further right, while the GOP screams that the nominee is a Socialist.
you are seriously predicting that he will replace John Paul Stevens with an anti-choice judge?
I know it’s Easter, but the drinking started early.
Covertly anti-choice.
The drinking hasn’t stopped since St. Paddy’s day. Makes reality easier to take. Hope died when Obamaq turned on the left and covered for Bush’s torture and wiretaps. The news story that on April 15 he will formally kill the manned space program was the final coffin nail. I’ve voted continuously since 1966, but 2008 was my last vote.
The NASA manned space-flight program is expensive, and it pumps of the economies of Houston, TX, Huntsville AL and Cape Canaveral, FL. And for some reason a lot of the folks who work on the manned space flight program as contractors just love small government and Republicans.
So for these folks, Obama is giving them the opportunity to work in the private sector on private sector terms instead of sucking at the federal teat.
I don’t have any problem with that. The manned spaceflight program will continue, but a mission to the moon or to Mars was squandered by the Bush tax cuts.
Manned spaceflight continues by contracting with Russia and soon China for launchs. Hardly JFK’s dream.
Correct. JFK wanted a full US-USSR partnership to go to the Moon, but NK turned him down at Vienna. Only shortly before Dallas did NK reverse himself, and Kennedy gave out new marching orders to much surprised and annoyed Nasa brass. All this however was again quietly reversed when JFK’s successor came to power. Back to the old, stupid and expensive ways of competing cold warrior nations.
Until they start contracting with Virgin and other space corporations and launching from Kennedy Spaceflight Center. Don’t think that the launch infrastructure is going to be abandoned.
They’re the geniuses who designed a space shuttle that hardly worked, then no replacement, then finally decided to build a replacement after a decade-long gap funded by laying everyone involved with the shuttle off and closing down the space station, and then went over-budget and underperformed on the replacement. Really it’s shameless to say Obama has anything to do with the situation.
Agree mostly. Nasa and their tone deaf management sure did kill public enthusiasm for manned flight, while they also cut corners on safety for political and/or bottom line purposes. Though the space shuttle era Nasa at least finally allowed the first US woman to go into space, a mere two decades after the Soviets had done so.
It would have seemed unbelievable a decade ago, but the behavior of the Catholic bishops and the Catholic church in general makes religion an issue again — just as we thought we’d overcome that kind of crap. But to pretend there’s no question about how a Catholic justice would react to a threat of excommunication is neither bigoted nor irrelevant.
This might come as a real shocker to most people, but most Catholics are not predisposed to be either pro-choice or anti-choice (there are plenty of Catholics who think the Pope and the priesthood can shove it where the sun don’t shine frankly). It is bigoted and irrelevant to consider their religious views, unless there is a reason to assume that it affects their ability to do their job.
.
Using the same short list is naturally biased toward a woman nominee, IMO reason to add names to this list in a Stevens slot,
(Scotus Monitor) – The White House appears ready to move quickly on a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court should Justice John Paul Stevens decide to retire before the end of the term.
The vetting of the short list of candidates was already largely done last year when President Barack Obama picked Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter, and knowledgeable sources say the president is likely to work off the same dossiers, now being updated. The list includes Solicitor General Elena Kagan, appeals court Judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
… Though the short list is said to feature Kagan, Wood, Garland and possibly Napolitano, other names still pop up in discussion, especially when it is noted that Stevens’ departure will deprive the Court of some feature it has now. Without Stevens, for example, the Court is composed of only East and West coasters; Midwesterners such as Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm or Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., could fill the void.
Scotus Blog: Meet the candidates
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Amy Klobuchar would be interesting, but Pawlenty would appoint her successor.
Granholm especially and to a lesser extent Klobuchar strike me both as pols not having quite the temperament or personal inclination to semi-cloister and grind it out behind the scenes for years in the dusty backrooms of Scotus.
If they changed the law to allow teevee, then maybe. But both seem like more the type who’d want the media spotlight a little more than what the barely covered SupCt offers.
Though Granholm might be at a political dead end in MI, except for the US House, unless Sen Levin decides to retire.
Senator Specter is warning that Steven’s potential replacements will likely face a filibuster –
to really understand how stupid this procedure is, Imagine a world where all of us could get away with that.
Link to short political satire video, Filibuster Fever:
http://bit.ly/9iegrc
I think there should be a requirement that at least a third of the “justices” have not been judges at any level. We need a bigger dose of common sense than ability to spin Constitutional angels on the heads of pins.
Stevens is the only, or almost only, intellectual heavy hitter on this bench — not that the court has ever been a beacon of deep thought. Most of the rest are The Smartest Guys in the Room in the Enron sense — all calculation, no thought. It’s kind of startling to try and think of somebody who might end up being a great justice and coming up empty.
We need a Chomsky, a Zinn, a Rawls, but we’ll get another good go-along-to-get-along type with a center-liberal bent if we’re lucky. I’d worry about Napolitano’s civil liberties commitment. I think setting back the march of the corporate-police state will trump every other issue in the near future. Even a libertarian-leaning guy like Lawrence Lessig would look pretty good to me. I’d like to see somebody from the middle of the country, but can’t think of anybody.
I would have loved for the WH to put out a release on April 1st saying Stevens resigned .. and that they were gonna put up Chomsky for Supreme Court .. because that would have suckered in a lot of the right .. they would have believed that for sure .. it would have been a classic April Fools joke .. at the Republicans expense
To be fair, Scalia is a pretty smart guy himself. I disagree with virtually everything that comes out of his mouth, but he’s no dummy.
Clarence Thomas, on the other hand…
Smart like Enron, right — weasel clever, quick, one-dimensional like a good corporate lawyer or salesman. I’ve read of few of his more prominent decisions and have yet to see anything like a large intelligence at work. Compared to somebody like, say, Brandeis, who was part of some horrendous decisions, Scalia looks like a total lightweight. It’s only the likes of Roberts and Thomas that make him seem smart by comparison. But if you know of anything from Scalia that suggests a broad intellect, I’d be interested in reading it.
My guess is that it won’t be a judge or an academic. Perhaps a politician or a former one. And also that it won’t be a “minority” person or a woman. So… a white man. The calculus is already that Obama is serving the needs of “his people” which upsets a good many of those white independent men (and some women). He has already put an Hispanic woman on the court. He passed a health care reform bill which upsets many because they misperceive it as stealing from them (the hard-working white folks to use Hillary’s term) to redistrubute wealth to poor blacks. He has a lot of religious minorities (ie., Jewish folk) in the White House. So they will probably be passed by. But I have no doubt that he will choose someone with great smarts and charisma. The idea will be to find someone who it’s hard to be against, someone who can’t be characterized as “an activist,” which the Republicans will be anyhow, making them seem even more out of touch than they already are. As for who that could be? No idea!
Hillary?
In a way it would be the perfect job for her. She certainly wouldn’t be intimidated by the wingnuts, and is a quick study. But everything she said would be examined for the Hand of Bill, and I’d be a little uncomfortable about her civil liberties notions.
Too old. I want the next Dem nominee to be 55 tops, preferably still in her 40s.
HRC is also an advocate type, not a judge type.
I like it but Obama wouldn’t do it. Not bipartisan enough, you know.
Dawn Johnson 🙂
What about a constitutional law professor? Then we would get someone learned and used to wrestling with the issues. Besides they could be quite a bit younger than many of the other qualified pools.
Obama probably knows a fair few former colleges who he could tap for the job. I don’t know many off the top of my head, but Patrick Murphy comes to mind. He taught the constitution at West Point.
That’s why I suggested Charles Ogletree who is at Harvard Law School. And he’s African American. That would make their heads explode! Or Christopher Edley,Jr who is the dean at Boalt Hall Law School in Berkeley.
Charles Ogletree was the law professor of both Michelle and President Obama. He is currently sort of an unpaid advisor to the president. I’m not sure Obama could get him through the confirmation process.
I like Ogletree. Although I’m not sure he wants to leave his situation at harvard.
She’d be a great justice and it would be an amazing capstone to her career.
We need someone who is under 60 and dedicated to serving as long as possible. I love Hillary but this just isn’t the right job for her.
Christopher Edley, Jr. (born 1951) is Dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).
Is my top choice -smart ,savy ,principled and enough
of a firebrand to counter the Sclia cabal at PR .
Bingo!
And he can’t get rid of John Yoo?
Leah Ward, Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court.
My ‘ give me some popcorn and watch the right wing EXPLODE’ candidates:
Lawrence Tribe
Anita Hill
(hey, I can have fantasies about this, can’t I?)
Well, if Arlen can have a list, so can I:
Al Franken. Michael Moore. Barbara Lee. Noam Chomsky. Barbara Boxer. Nancy Pelosi. Richard Trumka. Jeremiah Wright (hey, he’s as moderate as Scalia or Roberts!). A nicely balanced selection, I think, ranging from centrist to mildly leftist. The Reps should have no problem with this, since any five of these would be perfect mirrors to the court’s current majority.
Oh, this is fun: Elizabeth Warren, Bill Moyers, Scott Horton, Howard Dean, Alan Grayson, Marcy Wheeler.
I’d exclude Moyers .. only because of his age .. I want someone who will be there a while
But I agree that Elizabeth Warren would be a great choice. Then again I’d like to see her running the Consumer Financial Protection Agency if they can create it.
A big thumbs up to them all. And just to send Boo a balut Easter egg, Ralph Nader.
…but my money’s on Ellen, now that she has judicial experience.
Brilliant.
Product placement and astrology come to the SC. Yay.
There should be 4-5 women on the court, considering more women are graduating law school these days than men.
Obama should just keep appointing women until he gets 4 on there. I’m a guy and no it would not offend me. There are plenty of young female lawyers (40s-50s) who are just as smart and qualified as any man.
The person must also be liberal, smart and young (under 60, preferably under 50). I’ve heard good things about Diane Wood, but there are plenty of others to consider.