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Having survived the Bush administration, Justice Stevens to retire

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has announced he will retire this summer, giving President Barack Obama his second appointment to our nation’s highest court.

A Republican, appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford, Stevens was originally considered a center-right vote, but with the extreme ideological shift of the court in recent years he has since become the leader of the bench’s “liberal bloc.” In that capacity, the 89-year-old Stevens gamely and nobly survived the Bush administration, saving the appointment of his replacement for a president not seeking to place our Constitution in the hands of a radically partisan, activist court.

In addition to being its liberal leader, Stevens is also the court’s lone W.A.S.P., the other eight justices being Roman Catholics and Jews of varying ethnicities. With that heritage in mind, and with an eye toward diversity, many court observers expect President Obama to appoint another white, Protestant to the “W.A.S.P. seat” on the bench, much like the first President Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to fill the “black seat” vacated by Justice Thurgood Marshall.

UPDATE:
The Republican Senator from Cloud Cuckoo Land chimes in:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a member of the committee, issued a statement calling for Obama to avoid “activist judges.”

You mean the kinda “activist judges” that ignore a century of legal precedent on campaign finance? Yeah, well, eat me.

Comments

  1. 1

    with the extreme ideological shift of the court in recent years he has since become the leader of the bench’s “liberal bloc.”

    You’re a liar, Goldy.

    And not even a good one.

    You’re a far-left liberal … is there anything you disagree with Stevens on, off the top of your head? He is the hero of the left, not because he is a counter to the “extreme right,” but because they agree with almost every opinion he has … which means he is as left as they are.

  2. 2

    smudge @1,

    You strike me as a sad, angry little man. Stop by Drinking Liberally sometime and prove otherwise.

  3. 3

    Kelo vs. New London puts lie to the word liberal. Statist would be more accurate.

    DLTDHYOTWO

  4. 4

    “You’re a liar”

    The usual knee-jerk response from the brain-dead Pudge. He spewed that line umpteen times yesterday.

    “You strike me as a sad, angry little man.”

    He strikes me as just another pathetic wingnut who can’t get a grip on his Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It’s like you can’t be a wingnut these days unless you revel in your NPD.

  5. 5

    I hope the Democrats put in their own Clarence Thomas. Someone with a set ideological position who never asks a SINGLE question or talks (really), and just naps and then stamps their pre-set opinion on every argument. LOL

    Seriously, it’s FUNNY that Stevens is a Republican appointee, but the Republicans have gone SO FAR right into wingnut conspiracy territory that he’s now considered liberal. Nixon would be a liberal by modern Republican standards. So ANYONE Obama nominates, anyone, will be the “most liberal candidate ever” according to the wingnut birther conspiracy nuts that run the Republican party now a days.

  6. 6

    Steve @4,

    Yeah, the “liar” thing is just plain lazy. He also doesn’t seem to have much fun at this political blogging thing. If one can’t take joy from one’s vocation, why do it?

  7. 7

    To claim something so easy to confirm is a lie is pathetic and induces pitty for the whelp.

    I heard the Republican party campaign platform from 1956 read on the radio awhile back. Good God, it was well to the left of the current main-stream Democratic party.

  8. 8

    Alki Postings is correct. There is no Liberal Wing on the Court, there’s a moderate middle with no left or liberal wing, with the right wing having a strong and angry steriod-pumped right wing. Stevens is the leader of the moderates while the liberals await the return of one of our own.

  9. 9

    @6 Yesterday we were talking about the joy of being Pudge. He’s the one commenter on your blog who has never, not even once, displayed a sense of humor.

  11. 11

    @1 pudge 04/09/2010 at 8:37 am spewed

    He [Justice Stevens] is the hero of the left, not because he is a counter to the “extreme right,” but because they agree with almost every opinion he has … which means he is as left as they are.

    Steven is not now, nor has ever been a hero of the left. SCOTUS heroes of the left are: Marshall, Brennan, Warren and members of the Warren Court.

    Goldy’s summarization that Stevens survived is spot on. Stevens like all justices and all people has evolved and changed over 35 years, but Stevens jurisprudence is only slightly different at the margins.

    To the extent that liberals respect and admire Stevens in 2010 it is due to his staunch anti-activist and principled dissent in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case, and obviously his determination to allow a president like Obama choose his replacement.

    A conservative mid western Protestant hasn’t stood a chance of being appointed to the SCOTUS by a Republican administration since Ford.

    and pudge… you are not a “LIAR!“.
    You are a 2nd rate propagandist with delusions of grandeur who rarely does his homework.

  17. 17

    @14

    Kagan is the least sucky of all the names the left has tossed into the hat for consideration.

    Somebody seriously suggested Harold Koh. Like that would ever happen.

  18. 18

    I’d trust Justice Stevens’s own judgment on his positions rather more seriously than pudge’s. As reported by NY Times writer Jeffrey Rosen in September 2007 (emphasis added):

    Stevens, however, is an improbable liberal icon. “I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all,” he told me during a recent interview in his chambers, laughing and shaking his head. “I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative.” Stevens said that his views haven’t changed since 1975, when as a moderate Republican he was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the Supreme Court. Stevens’s judicial hero is Potter Stewart, the Republican centrist, whom Stevens has said he admires more than all of the other justices with whom he has served. He considers himself a “judicial conservative,” he said, and only appears liberal today because he has been surrounded by increasingly conservative colleagues. “Including myself,” he said, “every judge who’s been appointed to the court since Lewis Powell” — nominated by Richard Nixon in 1971 — “has been more conservative than his or her predecessor. Except maybe Justice Ginsburg. That’s bound to have an effect on the court.”

    For the record, Justice Stevens filled the vacancy left by William O. Douglas, so he is clearly correct about the relative left-right positions of himself and his predecessor. Justice Powell was appointed to take the seat of Hugo Black, marking a definitive rightward turn for the Court. Justice Ginsburg replaced Byron White, whose conservatism surprised many Democrats (including, perhaps, the President who appointed him … JFK). As Stevens says, Ginsburg is a very rare exception to the wrenchingly rightward turn of SCOTUS.

  19. 19

    @1 “You’re a liar, Goldy.”

    Because you say so?

    HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR

  20. 20

    Although conservatives like to fight against the “Warren Court”, it’s worth noting that Justice Earl Warren was a three-time Republican governor of California, as conservative bastion there during the 1930’s and 1940’s who was appointed to the court by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  21. 21

    As we recently posted, Obama needs to appoint another woman to help balance out the historical and current gender inbalance on the US Supreme Court. Only three women have been Supreme Court Justices. Two women are currently on the 9 member Court.

    Justice Sotomayor’s recent appointment has to be put in context. The other woman currnetly serving on the US Supreme Court, Justice Ginsberg, has had health problems. She is 77 years old and has had pancreatic cancer. Questions have been raised as to how long she will continue to serve.

    Now is the time to correct the gender inbalance on the US Supreme Court. Two women have been mentioned prominently to date. One is Elena Kagan – the current solicitor general and the other is Judge Diane Wood of the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chacago.
    http://www.majorityrules.org/b.....an-to.html

  22. 22

    rhp: There was nothing ‘conservative bastion’ about Warrren, either in California, or as a VP nominee, or on the Warren Court.

    You’re in over your sheet about California politics. Better stick to Tennessee.

    (Did you see my Winik/April 1865 takedown at HA, about three years ago? Google it out.)

  23. 23

    @21
    Gov. Granholm or Janet Napolitano are some other names I’ve heard tossed around.

    Though it would be wonderful to get a real liberal’s liberal like Brennan, Douglas, Marshall, or Warren.

    Kagan would be a very solid choice though.

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