Who will be Bush's
Supreme Court nominee?

WASHINGTON - The last day of the Supreme Court’s term — often a day on which justices announce their retirements — is three weeks away. Anticipation is building in Washington that President Bush will soon have his first opportunity to fill a court vacancy.

The base line which Bush’s advisors and most GOP senators would use in considering nominees is an approach to judging that refrains from imposing social policy changes, such as redefining marriage, on American society.

There are two other factors the administration would use in assessing a nominee to the Supreme Court:

• Is the nominee young enough to be able to serve on the Supreme Court for 30 years?
• How well would the nominee withstand fire from Democratic interrogators on the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings?

Names being discussed in Washington
The names now being discussed in the halls of the Senate and among lobbyists include three federal appeals court judges who all are young enough to serve for decades:

• Judge Michael McConnell, 50, who has served on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver since 2002.
• Judge J. Michael Luttig, 50, who has served on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond since 1991.
• Judge John Roberts, 50, appointed by Bush to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2003.

“While I like Mike McConnell, there’s no one being discussed of the names that you hear that I’m not comfortable with,” said Jay Sekulow, an influential conservative lawyer who is chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and who has argued several religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court.

No one has yet said publicly whether there will be a retirement from the court or which justices might step down.

If it were Chief Justice William Rehnquist, then the job search will call for a manager and consensus builder. “It’s a huge role, it’s not simply administrative. It’s coalescing, it’s leadership, and that has an impact” on the selection, Sekulow said.

A Judiciary Committee member, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said, “You need somebody who is consistent with what President Bush promised in this last election and with what I think the American people want: a capable jurist of breadth and integrity who understands that a judge’s role is more akin to an umpire than a political leader.”

Sessions said the majority of the American people are worried that judges “who are unaccountable and unelected are deciding social questions, pretending that it’s constitutional when it’s not. The Constitution never contemplated that ‘equal protection’ meant that two men could get married; (judges) decided in their own minds that this would be a good idea and declared the Constitution said that.”

Democrat: nominee must uphold privacy rights
A Democratic member of the Committee, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, said he would want to see “a responsible moderate who will serve the nation before any political agenda.”

Durbin emphasized the need for a nominee to adhere to the court’s 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which declared a right to privacy, even though that word isn’t found in the text of the Constitution. Griswold served as the foundation for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

“If they don’t respect the Griswold decision, as far as I am concerned they should be filibustered,” Durbin said. “(Supreme Court nominee) Robert Bork tried to split a few hairs on this issue and it got him into a world of trouble” in his 1987 confirmation hearing.

Advocacy groups, both liberal and conservative, are poised to make the case for and against Bush Supreme Court picks, as soon as a vacancy is announced.

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