Supreme Stakes

Ladies and gentlemen! We welcome you to another episode of USDemocrazy’s legal drama show: Full Court Press! [All rise.]

We are aware that thousands of people have been wagering millions of dollars this weekend betting on a horse race, but there is a far more important race going on in Washington… one where the winning currency is not dollars, but POWER!

That contest is the race to see who will be the first Supreme Court justice to FINISH! (their term).

The winner of that derby is none other than Justice David H. Souter.

For those of you who don’t know who the fleet-footed justice is, consult the all-knowing Wikipedia here.  The big news as of Friday, May 1st, is:

Justice Souter is bolting the stable (i.e. retiring).

What does that mean you ask?  With only nine members presiding on this almightiest of almighty courts, any change in personnel is a BIG deal. Filling a vacant seat on the Supreme Court is a chance for a President to appoint a political ally who may stay in power for decades.

So what exactly is President Obama looking for in a candidate for this important post? There are a couple of theories:

Dan Balz at the Washington Post says its going to be someone youthful, and who will fill the spot Souter played on the “liberal bloc” of the Supreme Court.

The New York Times reminds us of something we often forget. Mr. Obama was a law professor! Sounds like the NYT is looking to see a nominee who is

not a larger-than-life liberal to counter the conservative pyrotechnics of Justice Antonin Scalia, but a careful pragmatist with a limited view of the role of courts.

Check out the LIST of candidates that the good folks at Huffington Post assembled here and the list that ol’ Daily Beast assembled here.

One thing to keep in mind is that the composition of the Court is very important to both politicians and the public. You hear a lot about getting minorities and women on the bench, but a couple of journalists had some lesser-pondered observations about what makes up the Court.

Paul Campos at the Daily Beast says that what’s more rare than a minority on the bench is someone without a Harvard or Yale degree! He uses some pretty strong words like:

Supreme Court nominations have become repositories of the sort of superficial status markers that have come to obsess the American upper class.

Ben Smith at Politico raises another interesting point. Should the President nominate likely candidate Sonia Sotomayor:

most American Hispanics are Catholic or of Catholic origin — to the Supreme Court would diminish the court’s diversity in one way: The court would then be fully two-thirds Catholic.

Whether that actually matters or not we have no clue. So all this conjecture is neat, but what does THE PRESIDENT say he’s looking for? He’s the one picking right? Well, sources show that Mr. Obama is looking for someone who could show “empathy for the poor and disadvantaged” and be attuned to the “daily realities of people’s lives.”

There are plenty of folks who are backing different horses in this contest. You can be sure we here at USDemocrazy will be handicapping it all for you. Who’s your odds-on favorite? And how much are you willing to wager?