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Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
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Souter to retire: Obama gets his first Supreme Court nom op
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View: Souter Plans to Leave Supreme Court
Source: Nytimes
posted with the TFP thread generator
Souter Plans to Leave Supreme Court
May 1, 2009
Souter Plans to Leave Supreme Court
By PETER BAKER and JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON — Justice David H. Souter has indicated that he plans to retire at the end of the term in June, giving President Obama his first appointment to the Supreme Court, three people informed about the decision said Thursday night.
Justice Souter, who was appointed by a Republican president, George H.?W. Bush, but became one of the most reliable members of the court's liberal wing, has grown increasingly sour on Washington and intends to return to his home state, New Hampshire, according to the people briefed on his plans. His decision was first reported by National Public Radio.
The decision opens the first seat for a Democratic president to fill in 15 years and could prove a test of Mr. Obama's plans for reshaping the nation's judiciary. Confirmation battles for the Supreme Court in recent years have proved to be intensely partisan and divisive moments in Washington, but Mr. Obama has more leeway than his predecessors because his party holds such a strong majority in the Senate.
Two friends of Justice Souter, 69,deltete in bmatter said Thursday night that he had often spoken privately of his intentions to be the court's first retirement if Mr. Obama won the election last fall. He has told friends that he looked forward to returning to his native New Hampshire while he was still able to enjoy climbing mountains and other outdoor activities.
Replacing Justice Souter with a liberal would not change the basic breakdown on the court, where he and three other justices hold down the left wing against a conservative caucus of four justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate Republican appointee, often provides the swing vote that controls important decisions.
White House officials contacted Thursday night declined to comment. But Democratic strategists have been thinking for a long time about who Mr. Obama might put on the court. Among the names that have been floated in recent months are Elena Kagan, whom Mr. Obama named as his solicitor general.
A spokeswoman for the court said Thursday night that Justice Souter, 69, "has no comment on these reports that he is planning to resign."
Justice Souter was nominated to the court by the first President George Bush and confirmed as the 105th justice on Oct. 2, 1990. He replaced Justice William J. Brennan Jr., the court's liberal leader, who abruptly retired on July 20, 1990, at age 84 after suffering a stroke.
The nominee was little known even in Washington legal circles when the president introduced him to the country. He was a 50-year-old Harvard Law School graduate and former Rhodes scholar who had been confirmed to a federal judgeship only two months earlier and had barely moved into his chambers at the federal appeals court in Boston. For 12 years before that, he had been a state judge in New Hampshire.
As the Supreme Court became more conservative and polarized in the 1990's, Justice Souter provided an important vote that helped liberals eke out some important victories, most in 5-to-4 decisions that would not have been possible had he turned out to be the justice many conservatives assumed he would at the time of his nomination.
During his confirmation hearing, Judge Souter said he had no agenda on abortion and had not made a decision on how he would vote if the issue of Roe v. Wade was put before him. A major abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, arrived at the court in his second term and was argued on April 22, 1992. It was widely expected that Roe v. Wade would be formally or functionally overturned because by then another abortion rights supporter, Justice Thurgood Marshall, had retired, and he was replaced by Justice Clarence Thomas.
But the result was just the opposite. Justice Souter, joined by two other Republican-appointed justices, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, who had earlier both expressed strong doubts about Roe v. Wade, collaborated to produce a highly unusual joint opinion that reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion. With Justices Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens joining the central parts of the joint opinion, the vote was 5 to 4.
Justice Souter was in the minority, and a bitter dissenter, in the case of Bush v. Gore, the 5-to-4 decision that ended the disputed Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election and effectively declared George W. Bush the winner.
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Well it seems that a lat 100 day gift is dropped on President Obama's lap.
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"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom," Obama said. "The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criterion by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."
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Who do you think he's going to pick? Do you think that the confirmation process will be as divisive and contentious as it has in the past?
I'm not sure what he's going to do. I believe that he'll pick a more center more moderate liberal, but I'm not sure who that will be that this time. I've got some reading to do.
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