We are about to receive a first hand lesson in why elections matter.
Supreme Court Justice Davis Souter announced his retirement will take place at the end of the current Court term.
Souter normally votes with the Leftist, anti-originalist wing of the Court which includes Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Steven Breyer and John Paul Stevens. Ginsberg and Breyer were both Clinton appointees, while Souter was appointed by Bush Senior.
Souter reportedly checked with Ginsberg, who has cancer and Stevens, who's 89 to make sure they weren't planning to retire at the same time before making his announcement.
So...who is Obama likely to pick?
While Souter was hardly someone who's legal opinions I agreed with, he had the advantage of at least having knowledge of the law and practical experience in the courtroom.While we undoubtedly will get someone even farther Left than Souter, there's no guarantee of the knowledge and practical experience part of the equation.
Obama's short list so far leans towards Lefty academics and towards checking off ethnic boxes for females and 'people of color'. Let's look at them:
Elena Kagan: lessee...the ex-Dean of Harvard Law school is a career academic and the current Solicitor General. She's never served as a judge or even argued a case in front of an appellate court, so she has zero practical experience.
However, she's female, which checks one of Obama's boxes. And she does have the right political views. She called President Clinton's “don’t ask; don’t tell” policy “a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order,” which should give you a clue on how she'd vote on gay marriage. And she seems to have never heard of the Solomon Amendment, claiming that it somehow violates the First Amendment for the US to withhold funds from colleges that ban the military from recruiting on campus. That piece of legal reasoning was unanimously rejected by the entire Supreme Court.
Even better from Obama's point of view, she favors greatly enhanced presidential control over the Federal government, which is right up BOH's alley considering his unprecedented consolidation of power in the White House.
Sonia Sotomayor: - My money's on this one. Not only is she a hard Left ideologue but she's a twofer, female and Hispanic. Unlike Kagan, she has 16 years of court experience and currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York City.
She's appears to be more than willing to let her personal opinions shade her decisions on the bench. As she reportedly said in a 2002 speech at Berkeley, she thinks its very appropriate for a judge to consider their “experiences as women and people of color” in trying cases, which she believes should “affect our decisions.”
Amnestia por todo, amigos? Si se puede!
She also reputed to be something of a judicial bully.
Ricci v. DeStefano is a major reverse discrimination case now being heard by the Supreme Court. It concerns a suit by some New Haven Connecticut white firefighters who passed a mandatory promotional exam. Because there were no black firefighters who scored high enough to be promoted, the exam was tossed out, the white firefighters were denied their promotions and a number of black firefighters were promoted instead.
Judge Sotomayor attempted to summarily dismiss the case and toss it out of court, something that didn't sit well with the other members of the appellate panel that heard the case. As a matter of fact, she was formally reprimanded on the record by fellow Justice Jose Cabranes for her conduct during the trial, something that almost never happens publicly.
She sounds perfect for Obama.
Diane Wood: She's now a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit based in Chicago, and a senior lecturer at the U of Chicago Law school, the President and Bill Ayer's old stomping grounds. She and Obama are reportedly old pals who go back a long way.
Again, she's pretty far out there on the Left. Her particular pet hates appear to be Christians and anyone who doesn't favor unrestricted abortion on demand, so her nomination would please NARAL and Planned Parenthood. In one case, NOW v. Scheidler, she actually tried to apply the RICO statutes designed for mob prosecutions to stop pro-life groups from activists from engaging in lawful first amendment sanctioned protests. The Supreme Court reversed her, with even Lefty Justices Ginsburg and Breyer voting against her.
Judge Wood wanted to allow a publicly funded university to revoke the charter of the Christian Legal Society on campus because they refused to allow homosexuals to be members. She was overruled by the other judges on the panel.
Deval Patrick - A dark horse ( no pun intended) but a possibility. He's the very Left and not particularly popular current governor of Massachusetts, a black man and one with a solid background in legal grievance mongering.
He was the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under Janet Reno in the Clinton White House, and before that he had a long career as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense fund. Aside from his other qualifications, Prez Obama has received a certain amount of pressure from blacks who voted for him to have someone on the Court who's views are more in line with the Leftist lockstep, someone more 'representative of the African American community'.
Clarence Thomas, you see, is not authentically black. Of course.
Obama has a 59-40 majority in the Senate and can likely get any of these people on the Court he wants to. That doesn't mean that Senators who see these people as being out of the mainstream or the American people should sit back and take it quietly.
MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD. Remember what happened with Harriet Meirs.
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