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Win McNamee/Getty ImagesJustice John Paul Stevens at the White House in August 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/politics/10stevens.html?nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1
All,
The retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens--by far the most consistently progressive and socially responsible figure in the Court over the past 30 years and the acknowledged leader of the minority liberal wing in the Court--is a major political loss for real progressivism on the Court and thus represents a serious challenge and absolute imperative for Obama to aggressively replace him with a genuine liberal/progressive nominee...
Most importantly Obama must be willing to go all the way and FIGHT HARD for him/her when the notorious Republican right inevitably tries to eliminate and destroy the nominee--a process which will of course begin immediately...
If the President doesn't have the vision and guts to do so we will all live to regret it bigtime...
Kofi
Retirement of Justice Stevens Is Political Test for Obama
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Charlie Savage
New York Times
WASHINGTON — The announcement by Justice John Paul Stevens on Friday that he would retire at the end of this term gives President Obama the rare opportunity to make back-to-back appointments to the Supreme Court during the first two years of his presidency.
But it also presents Mr. Obama with a complex political challenge: getting a nominee confirmed in the thick of a midterm election season, when Republicans, fueled by the intensity of their conservative base, are angling to knock him down, and Democrats, despite having lost their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, are eager to flex their muscles after passing a landmark health care bill.
Justice Stevens’s announcement, delivered to the White House on Friday morning in a one-paragraph letter that began “My dear Mr. President,” set off an immediate scramble among the parties and a raft of advocacy groups that have been assembling dossiers on potential successors.
The three leading candidates — Mr. Obama is considering about 10 names all told, the White House says — present the president with a spectrum of ideological reputations, government backgrounds and life experiences. His choice will shape the battle to win Senate confirmation of his nominee.
In effect, the president must choose to be bold or play it safe.
Merrick B. Garland, 58, an appeals court judge here, is well liked by elite legal advocates and is widely considered the safest choice if Mr. Obama wants to avoid a confrontation with the minority party. A former federal prosecutor who worked on the Oklahoma City bombings, he is well-known in Washington’s legal-political community, where some view him as a kind of Democratic version of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Elena Kagan, 49, is solicitor general but has never been a judge and does not have a lengthy trail of scholarly writings, so her views are less well documented. But as the dean of Harvard Law School, she earned respect across ideological lines by bringing in several high-profile conservative professors, and she is a favorite among some in the extended Obama circle, who see her as smart and capable. Her relative youth means she could shape the court for decades to come.
Diane P. Wood, 59, a federal appeals court judge in Mr. Obama’s home city, Chicago, is seen as the most liberal of the three. She has been a progressive voice on a court that is home to several heavyweight conservative intellectuals. As a divorced mother of three, she brings the kind of real-life experience that Mr. Obama considers important. But her strong support for abortion rights would provoke a confrontation with conservatives. On Friday, the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life warned that a Wood nomination “would return the abortion wars to the Supreme Court.”
In making his selection, Mr. Obama confronts a vastly altered political landscape from the one he faced just 11 months ago, when he nominated Sonia Sotomayor to fill the seat left vacant by the retirement of Justice David H. Souter.
With the election of Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, Democrats can no longer hold off a Republican filibuster. And while Democrats are emboldened by the health care vote, the passage of the legislation — which is already facing legal challenges from Republicans who say it is unconstitutional — has left the Senate more polarized than ever and created a climate in which the courts could easily become an election issue.
For the court, Justice Stevens’s departure will be the end of an era. He is the longest-serving justice by more than a decade, and he is the last remaining justice to have served in World War II. (He joined the Navy, where he served as a cryptographer, the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked.) His leaving will not, however, change the composition of the court; although he was appointed in 1975 by President Gerald R. Ford, a Republican, he has become one of its most reliably liberal members during his nearly 35-year tenure, as the court drifted ever rightward.
Still, for Mr. Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago (where he was a colleague of Judge Wood), the vacancy is an unmistakable chance to put his stamp on the direction the court takes for the next several decades. Mr. Obama is already engaged in an unusual public confrontation with the court over its recent decision in the Citizens United case, which lifted strict limits on corporate spending in elections. On Friday, during a brief appearance in the Rose Garden, he made clear that the case was very much on his mind.
He vowed to “move quickly” in announcing a nominee. Senior advisers said they expected a decision within the next several weeks. The president said he would look for a candidate who possessed what he described as qualities similar to that of Justice Stevens: “an independent mind, a record of excellence and integrity, a fierce dedication to the rule of law and a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people.”
And, in what legal scholars took as a clear swipe at the Citizens United decision (for which Justice Stevens wrote the dissent), the president said he would look for a justice who “knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.”
The White House already has a Supreme Court nomination team in place, with the selection process run by the new White House counsel, Robert F. Bauer, and overseen by Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff. Once a nominee is picked, Mr. Bauer’s wife, Anita Dunn, who is Mr. Obama’s former communications director, will coordinate with advocacy groups. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during some of its most contentious confirmation fights, is also likely to play a crucial role.
On Capitol Hill, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and the current chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview that Justice Stevens told him privately several weeks ago of his intentions. Mr. Leahy said he had had “long conversations” with the president and wanted a vote before the August recess so that a new justice could be installed by the start of the fall term.
“When I was the most junior Democrat in the Senate, I voted for John Paul Stevens,” Mr. Leahy said. “He was a Republican nominated by a Republican president who was going to be up for election, and we voted for him, and proudly.”
That kind of bipartisanship is highly unlikely this time. While both sides agree that Republicans are unlikely to use a filibuster to block a Supreme Court nominee, conservatives will at the very least use the debate to make the case for Republican candidates. They say they will calibrate their fight to how liberal they perceive Mr. Obama’s choice to be.
“If it’s someone like Merrick Garland, I don’t think there’s going to be a big fight,” said Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group. But Mr. Levey said a more liberal nominee, like Judge Wood, would “be a field day for the conservative groups.”
But leaders of liberal groups, like Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice, are suspicious of conservative assurances that a more centrist nominee would face little opposition. They note that Justice Sotomayor was perceived by many on the left as far more centrist than they would have preferred, and yet Republicans portrayed her as a “judicial activist,” and 31 voted against her.
“No matter who he sends up,” Ms. Aron said, “I think Republicans are loaded for bear and will oppose.”
Democrats were divided Friday over whether Mr. Obama would pick a fight with Republicans or shrink from one. But Walter E. Dellinger III, who was acting solicitor general under President Bill Clinton, predicted passion, as much as politics, would play a role in Mr. Obama’s decision.
“I think that in choosing a Supreme Court justice,” Mr. Dellinger said, “the president is less likely to compromise and more likely to go with his heart than on any other matter.”
Peter Baker contributed reporting.
Official portrait of Justice John Paul Stevens, taken on January 27, 1976. (Photo: Library of Congress)
http://www.truthout.org/supreme-court-justice-stevens-will-retire-june58430
Supreme Court Justice Stevens Will Retire in June
09 April 2010 by Michael Doyle and David Lightman
McClatchy Newspapers
t r u t h o u t
Washington - Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement Friday, setting up a long-anticipated confirmation battle during the most sensitive of political seasons.
Stevens, who'll turn 90 on April 20, said that after 34 years on the high court it was time to step down.
"It would be in the best interests of the court to have my successor appointed and confirmed well in advance of the commencement of the court's next term," Stevens said in a letter to President Barack Obama.
A Supreme Court representative conveyed Stevens' letter to the White House at about 10:30 a.m. Friday. White House Counsel Bob Bauer called Obama with the news, reaching the president aboard Air Force One as Obama was returning from the nuclear treaty signing in Prague.
Stevens' departure in June at the end of the 2009-10 term will remove from the court its most senior justice as well as the linchpin of what's now the liberal wing. Stevens' retirement also will ensure that the Supreme Court is front and center during the upcoming midterm congressional elections.
For conservatives and liberals alike, the pending court vacancy will become a way to mobilize the troops as well as to wage proxy fights over hot-button issues, including abortion and wartime security.
For Obama, the vacancy provides a challenge and an opportunity.
Republicans are eager to unite around an issue that will engage their conservative base. The president's Democratic Party controls 59 seats, one short of the number that's needed to stop a filibuster. In a break with tradition, some senators have signaled that they wouldn't be reluctant to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee.
Stevens' departure also provides Obama a second chance to shape the court with a relatively young justice who'll be interpreting the Constitution for the next several decades. Because of Stevens' relatively left-of-center position, the new justice may not tip the court's overall ideological balance.
"I hope that senators on both sides of the aisle will make this process a thoughtful and civil discourse," said Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"Americans can expect Senate Republicans to make a sustained and vigorous case for judicial restraint and the fundamental importance of an evenhanded reading of the law," cautioned Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The experience of the president's first court choice, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, may foreshadow the political conflict to come. Thirty-one Republicans opposed her, including some who'd traditionally crossed party lines to approve Democratic choices in the past.
Nine Republicans voted for Sotomayor.
Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, put it this way: "Given the track record of the Senate Republicans, anybody Obama supports is going to be attacked. They're geared up for battle. The question is can Republicans oppose the nominee without embarrassing themselves too much."
Having named Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court, Obama now could make more history.
The nine-member court has never had more than two women serving at a time. Obama can change that if he reinforces Sotomayor and the 77-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a female nominee. Several possibilities exist.
A very serious contender is Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the first woman to hold that prestigious post as well as the first female dean of Harvard Law School. An appellate judge who was considered seriously last year, Diane Wood of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, knows Obama from their teaching at the University of Chicago Law School.
The president might name a second Hispanic justice, Judge Kim Wardlaw of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm comes from the non-appellate world, which Obama has said he'd like to make use of.
Alternatively, the president might try to name the first Asian-American to the court. Although only seven Asian-Americans are serving on the federal bench, the president could search elsewhere; for instance, by tapping his top State Department lawyer, former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh.
Regardless of whom the president nominates, a fight is all but guaranteed. Currently, only six of Obama's 15 appellate court nominees have been confirmed.
The last unanimously approved Supreme Court justice was Anthony Kennedy, 22 years ago. The deeply conservative top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, was himself rejected by Democrats when he was nominated to the federal bench, and midterm election years generally only harden positions.
Stevens' retirement announcement wasn't unexpected. He'd hired only one law clerk for next year, instead of the customary four. He would've had to serve roughly another year to become either the oldest or the longest-serving Supreme Court justice.
The longest-serving justice will remain William O. Douglas, whose seat Stevens took after President Gerald Ford nominated him in 1975.
At the time, Stevens was serving on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A Northwestern University Law School graduate and Navy veteran of World War II, he was deemed a conventionally moderate Midwestern Republican at the time.
Stevens "has earned the gratitude and admiration of the American people for his nearly 40 years of distinguished service to the judiciary, including more than 34 years on the Supreme Court," Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said Friday. "He has enriched the lives of everyone at the court through his intellect, independence and warm grace."
McClatchy White House Correspondent Margaret Talev also contributed to this report.
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Khaz, Hayley Austin)
http://www.truthout.org/a-supreme-court-shift-right58439
All,
We had all better hope this is not the case! If so it will be an unmitigated DISASTER for us all...
Kofi
A Supreme Court Shift to the Right?
09 April 2010
by Ruth Marcus
Op-Ed
t r u t h o u t
Washington - Here is an unsettling thought for those who waited eight years to have a Democratic president appointing judges: Barack Obama could well end his first term with a more conservative Supreme Court than the one he inherited.
This is, I hasten to admit, premature speculation -- even with the not-so-surprise announcement that Justice John Paul Stevens, the anchor of the court's liberal wing, is retiring.
First, the president's only nominee so far, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, has not even finished her first term. Where she turns out to be on the ideological spectrum in comparison to the justice she replaced, David Souter, is unknown.
Second, the accuracy of this conjecture will depend hugely on who the president selects to fill the vacancy.
Finally, as the examples of Souter (named by President George H.W. Bush) and Stevens (selected by President Gerald Ford) demonstrate, predictions about a new justice's future performance can make weather forecasting look like an exact science.
Nonetheless, it's entirely possible that a more conservative court could be Obama's paradoxical legacy -- particularly if he only serves a single term. The likelihood of the court shifting to the right is greater than that of its moving leftward.
In part, this could have been predicted even before Obama took office. It reflects less about him than it does the identity of the departing justices, one liberal followed by another. The next oldest justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 77. Conservatives are reaping the benefits of Bush father and son having selected justices who were relatively young. Justice Clarence Thomas was 43 when tapped, Chief Justice John Roberts was 50, and Justice Samuel Alito was 55.
It would likely only be in the case of a departure by 74-year-old Justice Antonin Scalia -- not likely to occur voluntarily during Obama's presidency -- or Justice Anthony Kennedy, 73, that the president would have an opportunity to dramatically alter the court's ideological makeup.
But there's little in Obama's record as president to suggest that he would expend enormous capital to secure the most liberal possible justice. From the point of view of liberal groups, Obama's nominees to the lower federal courts have been, overall, disappointingly moderate.
In selecting Sotomayor, Obama acted with an eye less to ideology than to ethnicity; the selection does not offer much of a clue into what the president is looking for, as a matter of constitutional interpretation, in future justices. The conservative howling about Sotomayor's alleged radicalism had as little basis in reality as do the parallel assertions about Obama.
As Tom Goldstein of ScotusBlog put it after analyzing Sotomayor's appellate record, "Our surveys of her opinions put her in essentially the same ideological position as Justice Souter." From her conduct on the bench so far, there's no reason to change that assessment.
By contrast, it's likely, although not certain, that a Stevens replacement will be more conservative than the retiring justice. If so, this would be largely in line with history. In an interview with Jeffrey Rosen for The New York Times Magazine in 2007, Stevens noted, "including myself, every judge who's been appointed to the court since Lewis Powell (chosen by Richard Nixon in 1971) has been more conservative than his or her predecessor." Stevens excepted Ginsburg, who replaced the more conservative Byron White.
In any event, Stevens' replacement is almost certain not to be as influential a player on the left as the departing justice. As the court's senior associate justice, Stevens spoke immediately after the chief justice during the court's discussion of cases; he had the power to assign opinions and some influence with swing justices such as Kennedy and, before her departure, Sandra Day O'Connor.
I'm not arguing, by the way, that Obama would go wrong by picking a Stevens successor likely to edge the court to the right. Indeed, there is a plausible argument that a justice viewed as more centrist might have more chance of bringing along conservative colleagues on a particular issue. Two of those mentioned as possible replacements, Judge Merrick Garland of the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, are viewed as more moderate than Stevens. Either would be a superb choice.
But my prediction stands: The court that convenes on the first Monday in October is apt to be more conservative than the one we have now.
Ruth Marcus' e-mail address is marcusr@washpost.com.
(c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
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Win McNamee/Getty Images
