View Full Version : Senior Justice Stevens To Retire
It was just announced Senior Associate* Justice Stevens - only veteran on the SCOTUS - will retire at end of this session.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_stevens_10
Richard
* Thanks GL.
Elections have consequences.
President Obama is the Prez and it's his right to pick the replacement.
He is the best one to go, it will be hard to be more liberal then him.
greenberetTFS
04-09-2010, 10:35
The sad thing about this is BHO gets to nominate another liberal and that will still leave the count at 5 - 4...............:mad::mad::mad:
Big Teddy :munchin
Guess it's time to appoint an Asian, moderately liberal, veteran with an Honorable Discharge who's recently come 'out of the closet'. ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
The Reaper
04-10-2010, 08:46
I do not expect any moderate picks from this administration.
Personally, I suspect that they are trying to clone another Ginsberg for the Court.
TR
Green Light
04-10-2010, 12:38
It was just announced Chief Justice Stevens - only veteran on the SCOTUS - will retire at end of this session.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_stevens_10
Richard
Just one aside, Stevens is an associate justice. But, he's been there since before dust was invented.
John Roberts is the Chief Justice of the US.
Humanly insightful...
Richard
My Boss, Justice Stevens
On Friday, John Paul Stevens, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice on the bench, announced that he would retire at the end of the term. The Op-Ed editors asked six of his former clerks to share their memories of working for him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11stevens.html?hp
When Stevens was appointed he was considered a moderate conservative. He maintains he never changed, the court did. I think there is a lot to think of in that statement. when he was appointed who were the leading conservatives voices? William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Mickey Edwards et al. Today? Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin etc. If that is not disturbing you are not paying attention
craigepo
04-11-2010, 08:39
If Stevens was a moderate conservative when he was put on the bench, then this country is much better off than it was 20 years ago. Stevens is very liberal.
Get ready. Here comes another under-qualified, big government, ignore-the-Constitution nominee.
If Stevens was a moderate conservative when he was put on the bench, then this country is much better off than it was 20 years ago. Stevens is very liberal.
Get ready. Here comes another under-qualified, big government, ignore-the-Constitution nominee.
With all due respect, how is this country better off than 20 years ago? And do you mean another nominee who would legislate from the bench and decide corporations have the right of free speech? Or that eminemt domain extends to Walmart?
armymom1228
04-11-2010, 16:06
If Stevens was a moderate conservative when he was put on the bench, then this country is much better off than it was 20 years ago. Stevens is very liberal.
Get ready. Here comes another under-qualified, big government, ignore-the-Constitution nominee.
I agree your Honor. Of the three names on the theoretical shortlist. My money is on the Solicitor General. The other two have a track record that can cause delay in the current Adminstrations legislative agenda. The SG has recently been through and approved in her confirmation hearings. The scary part is that she has no real experience. God I cannot wait for 2012. :(:eek:
armymom1228
04-11-2010, 16:13
When Stevens was appointed he was considered a moderate conservative. He maintains he never changed, the court did. I think there is a lot to think of in that statement. when he was appointed who were the leading conservatives voices? William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Mickey Edwards et al. Today? Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin etc. If that is not disturbing you are not paying attention
Why do you feel that the 'conservative voices' that you stated are 'today' are distrubing? You missed Newt Gingrich. He gave a great speech in New Orleans last week.. he is a 'today' conservative.
AM
craigepo
04-11-2010, 17:02
With all due respect, how is this country better off than 20 years ago? And do you mean another nominee who would legislate from the bench and decide corporations have the right of free speech? Or that eminemt domain extends to Walmart?
I mean that Stevens is very liberal. If he was considered to be a "moderate conservative" 20 years ago, then either the country has moved very far to the right, or someone is full of crap.
As to who gets nominated for the next seat: I would guess that the mind-set of a Sotomayor would be about as conservative as Obama will get for his next pick.
This post is the first of two exploring how the Supreme Court may shift to the right following Senior Associate Justice Stevens's retirement.
Source is here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040904016_pf.html). A Supreme Court shift to the right?
By Ruth Marcus
Saturday, April 10, 2010; A17
Here is an unsettling thought for those who waited eight years to have a Democratic president appointing judges: Barack Obama could well end his first term with a more conservative Supreme Court than the one he inherited.
This is, I hasten to admit, premature speculation -- even with the not-so-surprise announcement that Justice John Paul Stevens, the anchor of the court's liberal wing, is retiring.
First, the president's only nominee so far, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, has not even finished her first term. Where she turns out to be on the ideological spectrum in comparison to the justice she replaced, David Souter, is unknown.
Second, the accuracy of this conjecture will depend hugely on who the president selects to fill the vacancy.
Finally, as the examples of Souter (named by President George H.W. Bush) and Stevens (selected by President Gerald Ford) demonstrate, predictions about a new justice's future performance can make weather forecasting look like an exact science.
Nonetheless, it's entirely possible that a more conservative court could be Obama's paradoxical legacy -- particularly if he serves only one term. The likelihood of the court shifting to the right is greater than that of its moving leftward.
In part, this could have been predicted even before Obama took office. It reflects less about him than it does the identity of the departing justices, one liberal followed by another. The next oldest justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 77. Conservatives are reaping the benefits of Bush father and son having selected justices who were relatively young. Justice Clarence Thomas was 43 when tapped, Chief Justice John Roberts was 50 and Justice Samuel Alito was 55.
It would probably only be in the case of a departure by 74-year-old Justice Antonin Scalia -- not likely to occur voluntarily during Obama's presidency -- or Justice Anthony Kennedy, 73, that this president would have an opportunity to dramatically alter the court's ideological makeup.
But there is little in Obama's record as president to suggest that he would expend enormous capital to secure the most liberal possible justice. From the perspective of liberal groups, Obama's nominees to the lower federal courts have been, overall, disappointingly moderate.
In selecting Sotomayor, Obama acted with an eye less toward ideology than toward ethnicity; the selection does not offer much of a clue into what the president is looking for, as a matter of constitutional interpretation, in future justices. The conservative howling about Sotomayor's alleged radicalism had as little basis in reality as do the parallel assertions about Obama.
As Tom Goldstein of ScotusBlog put it after analyzing Sotomayor's appellate record, "Our surveys of her opinions put her in essentially the same ideological position as Justice Souter." From her conduct on the bench so far, there's no reason to change that assessment.
By contrast, it's likely, although not certain, that a Stevens replacement will be more conservative than the retiring justice. If so, this would be largely in line with history. In an interview with Jeffrey Rosen for the New York Times Magazine in 2007, Stevens noted, "including myself, every judge who's been appointed to the court since Lewis Powell (chosen by Richard Nixon in 1971) has been more conservative than his or her predecessor." Stevens excepted Ginsburg, who replaced the more conservative Byron White.
In any event, Stevens's replacement is almost certain not to be as influential a player on the left as the departing justice. As the court's senior associate justice, Stevens spoke immediately after the chief justice during the court's discussion of cases; he had the power to assign opinions and some influence with swing justices such as Kennedy and, before her departure, Sandra Day O'Connor.
I'm not arguing, by the way, that Obama would go wrong by picking a Stevens successor likely to edge the court to the right. Indeed, there is a plausible argument that a justice viewed as more centrist might have more chance of bringing along conservative colleagues on a particular issue. Two of those mentioned as possible replacements, Judge Merrick Garland of the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, are viewed as more moderate than Stevens. Either would be a superb choice.
But my prediction stands: The court that convenes on the first Monday in October is apt to be more conservative than the one we have now.
[W]hen he was appointed who were the leading conservatives voices? William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Mickey Edwards et al. Today? Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin etc. If that is not disturbing you are not paying attention
Why do you feel that the 'conservative voices' that you stated are 'today' are disturbing? You missed Newt Gingrich. He gave a great speech in New Orleans last week.. he is a 'today' conservative.Are Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and others conservatives or are they populists with right-of-center political views?
Are Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and others conservatives or are they populists with right-of-center political views?
Depends on what you mean by populist. Conservatism, by it's very definition is a belief in certain core values. Limited Govt, American exceptionalism, free-market, self reliance/responsibility, strong military, and belief in God to name a few. Populists believe in opposition to the ruling party based on popular opinion. You can have both liberal and conservative populists as you pointed out with your comment that I highlighted. Kinda like Apples and Oranges. They are not mutually exclusive terms. You can be both.