THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT REPLACING HIM...:

Supreme Court's Stevens keeps cards close to robe (Joan Biskupic, 10/18/09, USA TODAY)

The self-effacing man who is rarely recognized beyond the court's marble walls is a powerhouse behind the scenes — and this might finally be his last term. Stevens' retirement would leave a major gap among liberals and shake up a court already in transition with a new justice this term. Stevens has not hired his usual set of law clerks for the session beginning next October. He says he is surprised by media attention to a signal he might retire soon.

"That can't be news," he says, declining to reveal his plans. "I'm not exactly a kid."

In a rare interview, Stevens was expansive about his nearly 34-year tenure, spoke warmly about his colleagues and elaborated on his outside pursuits — tennis and golf, plus a daily swim in the ocean when at his Fort Lauderdale home. He eluded questions about retirement, yet his tone looking back on his work was valedictory.

"We're getting to a point that our cases are revisiting issues that I wrote on 10, 20, 30 years ago," he says. "I really have felt pretty good about re-reading the opinions I wrote many years ago. I have to confess that."

Stevens' departure would alter the court and could strengthen the hand of its conservatives. President Obama likely would appoint a successor whose votes are similarly liberal. But it would be unlikely that a freshman justice could assume Stevens' mantle of leadership on the divided court, which has four reliable conservatives and four liberals, and Kennedy often straddling the middle.

Harvard University law professor Richard Fallon says Stevens' retirement would leave a significant void, especially given the role he took on after liberals William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall retired in the 1990s.

...is that the UR repeated the Gipper's mistake, appointing the unopposable quota hire first, rather than the intellectual heavyweight at the point in your presidency when you're strongest. The next justice will be even more moderate than the wise Latina, meaning President Obama will have moved the Court significantly to the Right.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 19, 2009 5:48 AM