Stop! In the Name of Law!

[lagilman]

For those of you who haven't had the chance or inclination to keep up with the non-flu non-financial news, Supreme Court Justice Souter is stepping down.

And, instead of George "I know her heart" Bush* making the decisions, we instead have a president with a respected jurisprudence background and training, a man whose lectures and public comments reflect an awareness that a Supreme must be aware of more than simply their own narrow worldview, when considering the long-term impact of their decisions

[from the NYT: In voting against the nomination of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as a senator, Mr. Obama said that “adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon.”... what concerned him most was the last mile, one that must take account of “broader perspectives on how the world works.”]

IOW, odds are he's not going to choose an old-school Dead White Man Yalie** of any gender or color.

The betting money is that he will appoint a woman, to even out the incredibly male-dominated Court and better reflect the reality of the American population. I can't see this as a bad thing, no matter her political views...if we're to become a gender-parity state, there first needs to be an evening out of power, and like 'em or loathe 'em, the Supremes are indeed a power -- and a long-term transforming power at that.

And once Souter is replaced, Obama will still have Ginsburg and Stevens (who are both, I think, slightly to the left of Souter) to replace. [there was no way, short of death, those three were going to step down before Bush was out of office, and I think they deserve kudos from every fuzzy wuzzy liberal on earth for that!)

Let the nomination games begin....



*remember Harriet Miers?
** my dad went to Harvard, and I lived in New Haven for two years. I have a learned bias, yes. Sorry.

Comments

[wedschilde.livejournal.com]

i want a lesbian liberal asian.

:::nods:::

okay. i've not had coffee. i will in a moment and will then have the brain kick in.

[wedschilde.livejournal.com]

okay. i'm back now. i've had coffee.

i admire the Liberal-Moderate Three for sticking it out because really, that shows so much conviction for their principals and their hope in really providing a solid focus on what America needs from its Justices.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

(chants) Scalia and Kennedy are 73, Scalia and Kennedy are 73...

They won't step down until health forces them, but one can hope.

[lagilman]

In a perfect world we'd have an ideologically-balanced Supreme Court, with long-term thinkers well-versed in both the Law of the Land and practical experience in the Real World.

I'd like non-violent religious differences in the Middle East, too.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I would be perfectly happy with more Souters -- from the very beginning, even when I disagreed with him, I had complete respect for his integrity and his respect for the law and for precedent. Roberts and Scalia, by contrast, are truly driven more by what ought to be in the world (e.g. the opinion that discussed women's inability to make good abortion decisions) than by what is said in the law.

Don't miss Mark Halperin's whine that White Men Need Not Apply. My heart breaks. http://thepage.time.com/2009/05/01/white-men-need-not-apply/

[arouraleona.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised it took one of them 100 days to do it. They all looked tired the last time I saw them on tv. All of them looked like they were just holding on, hoping against hope for a president they could retire under. I'm happy they got him, for their sake.

And you are very right; they deserve major kudos from all of us for hanging on and dealing with the Bush years. I, for one, thank them from the bottom of my heart.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Is the option to change the number of SC justices politically off the table?

[lagilman]

If I remember Gov 101 correctly, it's not off the table but why? A odd number prevents tie votes, nine allows for a range of opinions and age/experience, and prevents every Justice from retiring at once, to stagger the level of change. How would eleven or seven be better?

*goes off to doublecheck memory*

Ah.

From Wikipedia:

"The United States Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court. Article III of the Constitution gives Congress the power to fix the number of Justices. The Judiciary Act of 1789 called for the appointment of six Justices. As the country grew geographically, Congress increased the number of Justices to correspond with the growing number of judicial circuits: the court was expanded to seven members in 1807, nine in 1837 and ten in 1863.

At the request of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act (1866) which provided that the next three Justices to retire would not be replaced; thus, the size of the Court would eventually reach seven by attrition. Consequently, one seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. However, this law did not play out to its fruition, for in the Judiciary Act of 1869,[7] also known as the Circuit Judges Act, the number of Justices was again set at nine, where it has since remained.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to expand the Court in 1937; his plan would have allowed the President to appoint one additional Justice for each existing Justice who reached the age of 70 years 6 months but did not retire from the bench, until the Court reached a maximum size of fifteen justices. Ostensibly, the proposal was made to ease the burdens of the docket on the elderly judges, but the President's actual purpose was to add Justices who would favor his New Deal policies, which had been regularly ruled unconstitutional by the Court.[8] This plan, usually called the "Court-packing Plan," failed in Congress. The Court, however, gradually softened its opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal programs and thereby removed the President's need to alter it. In any case, Roosevelt's unprecedented tenure in the White House allowed him to appoint eight Justices total to the Supreme Court (second only to George Washington) and to promote one Associate Justice to Chief Justice.[9]"

I knew I remembered the Court-Packing Plan.