Here It Comes: Obama Will Have His First Supreme Court Vacancy To Fill – With Video

Thankfully, it’s Souter, who’s part of the liberal block, so this won’t tilt our last remaining lever of power too far left. Still, to be on the safe side, someone get our guys food tasters…

Supreme Court Justice Souter To Retire by Nina Totenberg NPR.org, April 30, 2009 · NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term. The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction. At 69, Souter is nowhere near the oldest member of the court. In fact he is in the younger half of the court’s age range with five justices older and just three younger. So far as anyone knows, he is in good health. But he has made clear to friends for some time that he wanted to leave Washington, a city he has never liked, and return to his native New Hampshire. Now, according to reliable sources he has decided to take the plunge and has informed the White House of his decision. Factors in his decision no doubt include the election of President Obama, who would be more likely to appoint a successor attuned to the principles Souter has followed as a moderate-to-liberal member of the court’s more liberal bloc over the past two decades. In addition, Souter was apparently satisfied than neither the court’s oldest member, 89-year-old John Paul Stevens, nor its lone woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery over the winter, wanted to retire at the end of this term. Not wanting to cause a second vacancy, Souter apparently had waited to learn his colleague’s plans before deciding his own. Given his first appointment to the high court, most observers expect Obama will appoint a woman, since the court currently only has one woman justice, and obama was elected with strong support from women. But an Obama pick would not likely change the ideological make-up of the court. Souter was a Republican appointed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990, largely on the recommendation of New Hampshire’s former governor John Sununu, who had become the first President Bush’s chief of staff. But Souter surprised Bush and other Republicans by joining the court’s more liberal wing. He generally votes with Stevens and the two justices who were appointed by President Bill Clinton — making up the bloc of four more liberal members of the court, a group that has usually been in the minority throughout Souter’s tenure. Possible nominees who have been mentioned as being on a theoretical short list include Elena Kagan, the current solicitor general who represents the government before the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomaor, a Hispanic judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Diane Wood, a federal judge in Chicago who taught at the University of Chicago at the same time future president Barack Obama was teaching constitutional law there. President Obama’s choice has an excellent chance of being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, where Democrats now have an advantage of 59 seats to the Republicans’ 40. By the time a vote on a successor is taken, the Senate is expected to have a 60th Democrat, as the Minnesota Supreme Court is expected to approve the recount that elected Democrat Al Franken over incumbent Repubican Norm Coleman in that state.