THERE'D HAVE TO BE A STRONG TEMPTATION...:

In Possible Retirement, the Likelihood of an Election-Year Confrontation (PETER BAKER, 3/25/10, NY Times)

If Justice Stevens retires, Democrats close to the White House said, the leading contenders will be three runners-up from last year: Elena Kagan, the solicitor general; Diane P. Wood, an appeals court judge in Chicago; and Merrick B. Garland, an appeals court judge in Washington. [...]

The candidates who would most excite the left include the constitutional scholars Harold Hongju Koh, Cass R. Sunstein and Pamela S. Karlan. Mr. Koh and Mr. Sunstein now work in the Obama administration while Ms. Karlan teaches at Stanford Law School. But none were finalists last year, and insiders doubt Mr. Obama would pick any of them now.

“If it were a Sunstein or a Koh, you would have all-out war,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group.

The front-runner with the most support among liberals would be Judge Wood, who has opposed some abortion restrictions and is respected for standing firm against strong, conservative judges on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She and Mr. Obama were colleagues at the University of Chicago.

With no judicial record, Ms. Kagan is less known. As dean at Harvard Law School, she hired conservative professors to expand academic diversity and has supported assertions of executive power. But she stirred a furor by barring military recruiters because of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly.

Judge Garland might be the safest choice. A former federal prosecutor now on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he is well regarded by Democrats as well as influential Republican senators like Orrin G. Hatch of Utah. But his careful jurisprudence stirs less enthusiasm among liberal activists.

...to promote one of his disastrous Administration picks out of his hair--Hillary or Joe Biden.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 26, 2010 5:30 AM