Scotus D.Souter announces Retirement plans...

[sbark]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103694193

NPR.org (http://www.npr.org/), April 30, 2009 · NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the court's current term.

........OK McCain, can you get the Gang of 14 backtogether for another ride?:rolleyes:

[Danny White]

Well, since Souter was appointed by a Republican and ended up voting like a liberal, maybe Obama will appoint someone who will vote like a conservative. :rolleyes:

This should be a good fight, although Obama will be able to get confirmed about whoever he wants.

[sbark]

Well, since Souter was appointed by a Republican and ended up voting like a liberal, maybe Obama will appoint someone who will vote like a conservative. :rolleyes:

This should be a good fight, although Obama will be able to get confirmed about whoever he wants.

......it would be the bipartisanship thing to do, it was a campaign promise afterall........Ann Coulter or Michelle Bachman:D

I want to be the 1st to welcome Scotus Ayers........:eek: has he paid his taxes? Or does Hillary or Bill still have the resume' dusted off?

[Danny White]

My darkhorse candidate:

http://blog.wired.com/cars/images/2008/04/30/hillary_clinton.jpg

[Danny White]

Seriously, though, my actual early guess is Sotomayor.

Female, Hispanic, Liberal... she's got it all.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080726_2597.php

[bbgun]

It really won’t make much difference. One liberal will be replaced by another. Whomever Obama picks can’t be much worse. Ditto if Ginsburg hangs it up.

[sbark]

Seriously, though, my actual early guess is Sotomayor.

Female, Hispanic, Liberal... she's got it all.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080726_2597.php

good logical call...

[xout]

I was hoping that we could possibly not have to deal with this until after the Hussein experiment. God help us all.

[silverbear]

Well, since Souter was appointed by a Republican and ended up voting like a liberal, maybe Obama will appoint someone who will vote like a conservative. :rolleyes:

This should be a good fight, although Obama will be able to get confirmed about whoever he wants.


If he can get anybody he wants confirmed, how will it be a "good fight"??

By your own admission, the only thing the Party of No will be able to do is holler and scream and hold their breaths until they turn blue...

I think he should nominate Garofalo... :D :D :D

In reality, he'll probably appoint somebody pretty moderate...

[silverbear]

Seriously, though, my actual early guess is Sotomayor.

Female, Hispanic, Liberal... she's got it all.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080726_2597.php


Well, there's already speculation that he'll appoint another woman, so you might be on the right track...

You're one of the few in here whose posts often educate me...

[ConcordCowboy]

Thank God he waited until Obama got into Office.

[burmafrd]

yeah, obama will certainly heed what the Dems said when they talked about having to have balance on the court. What BS. THroughout the history of our country every president got to pick either libs or conservatives on his court as he saw fit- only when the dems were out was this BS balance supposedly brought out.

[Doomsday101]

I would hope Obama's nomination this time paid their taxes. :laugh2:

[sbark]

Elections do have consequences — and so do appointments.

The biggest tension will come from the far-Left activists of Obama’s party. They’re losing a Lib rock. They can’t afford to have Souter replaced by a middle-ground justice who may not vote as reliably liberal as Souter. In fact, that will be Obama’s problem for all of the likely retirements on the Court — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens.

but I'm sure......the media angle on any nominee.....will be how "centrist" he/she is.............

....is Perez Hilton on the short list?

[Doomsday101]

President Bush nominated Souter as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on July 25, 1990,[6] and Souter took his seat on October 9, 1990, shortly after the United States Senate confirmed him by a vote of 90-9 after the Senate Judiciary Committee reported out the nomination by a vote of 14-3.

The nine senators voting against Souter included Ted Kennedy and John Kerry from Souter's neighboring state of Massachusetts. These senators, along with seven others, painted Souter as a right-winger in the mold of Robert Bork. They based their claim on Souter's friendships with many conservative politicians in New Hampshire. Their allegations failed to influence the other 90 senators because the press called him the "stealth justice" and showed that his professional record provoked little real controversy and provided very little paper trail. President Bush saw this lack of a paper trail as a positive for Souter, because one of President Reagan's nominees, Bork, had recently been rejected by the Senate partially because of the availability of his extensive written opinions on issues.[7] Bush claimed that he didn't know Souter's stances on abortion, affirmative action, or other issues.[3] The National Organization for Women opposed Souter's nomination and held a rally outside the hearings to oppose his selection.[3] The then-president of NOW, Molly Yard, testified that Souter would "end... freedom for women in this country."[8] Souter was also opposed by the NAACP, which urged its 500,000 members to write letters to their senators asking for Souter's defeat.[9] Despite this opposition and largely because of his lack of a paper trail, Souter won an easy confirmation compared to those of later Republican appointees.[10]

Souter spoke of his admiration for the conservative Justice John Marshall Harlan II of the Warren Court during his confirmation hearings.[4] The Wall Street Journal described the events leading up to the appointment of the "liberal jurist" in a 2000 editorial, saying Rudman in his "Yankee Republican liberalism" took "pride in recounting how he sold Mr. Souter to gullible White House chief of staff John Sununu as a confirmable conservative. Then they both sold the judge to President Bush, who wanted above all else to avoid a confirmation battle."[11] Rudman wrote in his memoir that he had "suspected all along" that Souter would not "overturn activist liberal precedents."[3] Sununu later said that he had "a lot of disappointment" about Souter's positions on the Court and would have preferred him to be more similar to Justice Antonin Scalia.[3]

After Souter was sworn in, he said, "The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right."

[Danny White]

I was hoping that we could possibly not have to deal with this until after the Hussein experiment. God help us all.

Brace yourself, because he'll get at least three during his first term.

Ginsburg and Stevens are absolute mortal locks to retire over the next 4 years.

Souter was somewhat unexpected since he's relatively young and in good health.

Fortunately, all three are liberals, so Obama can't go terribly further to the left of them.

Would have been nice, though, to replace at least one of them with a Thomas or Scalia clone and really shift the court to the right.

[BrAinPaiNt]

Brace yourself, because he'll get at least three during his first term.

Ginsburg and Stevens are absolute mortal locks to retire over the next 4 years.

Souter was somewhat unexpected since he's relatively young and in good health.

Fortunately, all three are liberals, so Obama can't go terribly further to the left of them.

Would have been nice, though, to replace at least one of them with a Thomas or Scalia clone and really shift the court to the right.

I wish we would not shift left or right but I guess that is what we get with Dems and Republicans making the choices.

[Danny White]

If he can get anybody he wants confirmed, how will it be a "good fight"??

By your own admission, the only thing the Party of No will be able to do is holler and scream and hold their breaths until they turn blue...



That's exactly what I mean... my right wing cronies and I will scratch and claw to our hearts' content... sure we'll lose, there's not really anything we can do about that... but we can raise a stink while we're doing it. :D

Maybe I should have said "fun fight" rather than "good fight" since it's bound to be a loss.

My whole shop is already buzzing about writing stuff to fight this. Exciting times.

Well, there's already speculation that he'll appoint another woman, so you might be on the right track...

You're one of the few in here whose posts often educate me...


The only caveat to this is that, since he's sure to have multiple nominations in his first term, he may want to keep his powder dry with the female and/or hispanic nominee until he's closer to 2012 and can get more "credit" for the nomination closer to the election.

A nominee this early on is likely to be old news by 2012.

I don't think it'll be Hillary unless the two of them had a handshake deal during the convention about it.

You need to remember this quote that Obama had from the campaign trail to see the type he'll try to nominate:

"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

I think it's highly likely that it'll be a minority for the first nominee. I don't think it'll be a black person because I think he'd be afraid that would come across as too cliche or predictable. That's why I was leaning towards hispanic.

How much of an absolute wildcard would it be if he nominated an openly gay nominee? That may be the one person that might not be able to get confirmation.

It would be a funny homage to Souter, though, who's never been married and has lived with his mother his whole life. :laugh2:

[Danny White]

I wish we would not shift left or right but I guess that is what we get with Dems and Republicans making the choices.

While I am an ideologue and like my judges and politicians predictable, I do see what you're saying. ;)

The Sandy O'Connors and Anthony Kennedys of the world do make things interesting because you can't really predict how they're going to vote. Those are always surprises, though, because they weren't nominated to be moderates, they just turned out that way.

[JBond]

While I am an ideologue and like my judges and politicians predictable, I do see what you're saying. ;)

The Sandy O'Connors and Anthony Kennedys of the world do make things interesting because you can't really predict how they're going to vote. Those are always surprises, though, because they weren't nominated to be moderates, they just turned out that way.

We need to keep in mind Obama did not think the Warren court was radical enough and considers our Constitution a charter of negative liberties. That should be enough to tell you what qualities Obama will require in his nominee.

[sbark]

SCOTUS appointees from the Left are more consistent in their level of idealogoy in recent history.......vrs. the candidates from HW and Reagan who must have been much more "progressive" in their thinking to be moderates at best, and in the case of Souter, fairly left leanings........ironic:rolleyes:

is it like a slot machine.........just time vrs odds?......or maybe Left appointee's are "born that way"......

[Danny White]

SCOTUS appointees from the Left are more consistent in their level of idealogoy in recent history.......vrs. the candidates from HW and Reagan who must have been much more "progressive" in their thinking to be moderates at best, and in the case of Souter, fairly left leanings........ironic:rolleyes:

is it like a slot machine.........just time vrs odds?......or maybe Left appointee's are "born that way"......

For some judges, it's clear what way they lean.

The problem that Reagan and GHW Bush had were that they had hostile Senates that they had to deal with.

Reagan tried to get a rock-solid conservative nominated, but, thanks to Specter (among others) that nominee got "Borked."

So he was sensitive to that and tried to go a safer route on the replacement nominee and we ended up with Kennedy.

For Bush and the Souter nomination, Bush wanted to nominate a "stealth" nominee that had a limited record to attack. He was still keenly sensitive to the Bork debacle, and didn't want to give his opponents much to hold on to. He wanted to nominate Clarence Thomas, but was convinced by his chief of staff, John Sununu, to pick Souter, who was from Sununu's home state. Sununu was convinced that Souter would be a solid conservative, famously saying that he'd be a "home run." They were wrong. :(

Humorously, both Ted Kennedy and John Kerry voted against Souter because they felt he would be "too conservative." NOW and the NAACP also opposed his nomination because they were sure that he'd oppose abortion and affirmative action.

[WoodysGirl]

Obama hopes to replace Justice Souter by October

By Mark Sherman And Jennifer Loven, Associated Press Writers – 33 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Friday he will replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter with someone who shares the president's respect for "constitutional values" and hopes to have "him or her" seated on the nation's highest court by the start of the next term in October. In a dramatic flourish, Obama interrupted spokesman Robert Gibbs' daily press briefing to announce that he had just talked to Souter.

The news of Souter's planned retirement had broken by then, but the White House had said nothing until the president came in.

Obama thanked Souter for his dedicated service, and quickly looked ahead to the nomination of a replacement.

"As I make this decision," Obama said, "I intend to consult with members of both parties, across the political spectrum. And it is my hope that we can swear in our new Supreme Court justice in time for him or her to be seated by the first Monday in October."

Souter informed Obama of his plans in a brief letter Friday. Obama praised Souter, who is leaving after nearly two decades in Washington. His retirement gives Obama his first pick for the Supreme Court.

Souter's departure is unlikely to change the court's conservative-liberal split. Obama's first pick is likely to be a liberal-leaning nominee, much like Souter.

The vacancy could lead to another woman on the bench to join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, currently the court's only female justice.

At 69, Souter is much younger than either Ginsburg, 76, or Justice John Paul Stevens, 89, the other two liberal justices whose names have been mentioned as possible retirees. Yet those justices have given no indication they intend to retire soon and Ginsburg said she plans to serve into her 80s, despite her recent surgery for pancreatic cancer.

In Philadelphia, Sen. Arlen Specter said he would like to see more ethnic and gender diversity on the high court. "I think that, given the proportion of women in our society, that one out of nine is underrepresented," said Specter, a recent convert to the Democratic Party. "The court could use some diversity along a number of lines," he added, mentioning African-Americans and Hispanics.

Interest groups immediately began gearing up.

"Obama's own record and rhetoric make clear that he will seek left-wing judicial activists who will indulge their passions, not justices who will make their rulings with dispassion," said Ed Whelan, president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, said, "We're looking for President Obama to choose an eminently qualified candidate who is committed to the core constitutional values, who is committed to justice for all and not just a few,"

Some of the names that have been circulating include recently confirmed Solicitor General Elena Kagan; U.S. Appeals Court Judges Sonya Sotomayor, Kim McLane Wardlaw, Sandra Lea Lynch and Diane Pamela Wood; and Leah Ward Sears, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Men who have been mentioned as potential nominees include Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein and U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo of Chicago.

Patrick said Friday he's "120 percent" focused on being governor, but did not rule out interest in a high court appointment.

The Obama White House began from almost its first days in office preparing for the possibility of a retirement by thinking about and vetting potential high court nominees. Those efforts only accelerated with Ginsburg's cancer surgery.

The timing may have been unexpected, but Souter has long yearned for a life outside Washington.

He has never made any secret of his dislike for the capital, once telling acquaintances he had "the world's best job in the world's worst city." When the court finishes its work for the summer, he quickly departs for his beloved New Hampshire.

The Rev. John McCausland, an Episcopal minister and friend of Souter's since college, said he and Souter have talked about what the justice would do after leaving the court. "He expects to go on senior status at the First Circuit," McCausland said, referring to the federal appeals court in Boston, "but not to work very full-time, and he's looking forward to finally having a life and catching up."

Souter has been on the court since 1990, when President George H.W. Bush tapped him for the Supreme Court.

At the time, Bush aide John Sununu, the former conservative governor of New Hampshire, hailed the choice as a "home run." And early in his time in Washington, Souter was called a moderate conservative.

But he soon joined in a ruling reaffirming woman's right to an abortion, a decision from 1992 that remains still perhaps his most noted work on the court.

Souter became a reliable liberal vote on the court on the social issues that regularly divide the justices on ideological grounds. He was one of the four dissenters in the 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore that sealed the presidential election for George W. Bush.

Yet as Souter biographer Tinsley Yarbrough noted, "he doesn't take extreme positions." Indeed, in June, Souter sided with Exxon Mobil Corp. and broke with his liberal colleagues in slashing the punitive damages the company owed Alaskan victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Souter is the court's 105th justice, only its sixth bachelor. He works seven days a week through most of the court's October-to-July terms, a pace that he says leaves time for little else. He told an audience this year that he undergoes "an annual intellectual lobotomy" each fall.

Souter earned his bachelor's and law degrees from Harvard sandwiched around a stay at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar.

He became New Hampshire's attorney general in 1976 and a state court judge two years later. By 1990, he was on the federal appeals court in Boston for only a few months when Bush picked him to replace Justice William Brennan on the Supreme Court.

National Public Radio first reported Souter's plans Thursday night.

___

Associated Press writers Jesse J. Holland and Ben Feller in Washington, Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia and Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_scotus_souter_retiring
----

As long as the candidates taxes are in order, shouldn't be a problem.

[burmafrd]

I ownder if Silver and the others will note what was said about Souter by their brethren before his nomination was approved.

[burmafrd]

I predict a Hispannic Gay Woman as Obama's Nominee.
Probably a former member of the Weather Underground.

[ninja]

Good riddance to Souter! If nothing else, he was a total bore.

[Danny White]

Seriously, though, my actual early guess is Sotomayor.

Female, Hispanic, Liberal... she's got it all.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080726_2597.php

I was out of the country earlier this week, so this is the earlier I could gloat about this, but...

NAILED IT!! :D

[ShiningStar]

I was out of the country earlier this week, so this is the earlier I could gloat about this, but...

NAILED IT!! :D


You should be oh so thrilled. Let the good times roll.