United States Supreme Court Justice David Souter has announced his retirement effective the end of the Court's current term. I will be sorry to see him go. He was not some closet flaming liberal, as many on the right of our political spectrum would have you believe. He was an academic, an intellectual, and his guide was the law, not the passions of men--or of women.
Though President Obama's nominee to replace Souter will not change the current philosophical unbalance of the Court's members, it will be an important signal for the future of the country. Souter was a George H.W. Bush appointee, but he never cast his vote based on politics or ideology. He voted based on his understanding of the law. His understanding, as his devotion to the idea of a "government of laws and not of men," was often profound.
Many names of potential nominees to replace Souter are already being bandied about by the pundits. Most of them seem to be of women who have extensive experience in our legal system, be it as practicing attorneys or as academicians (there's at least one law school dean's name in circulation, I believe).
I am hoping against hope that Obama does not do the expedient thing and nominate someone whose nomination can be confirmed relatively easily. I hope he also doesn't pick his nominee from the ranks of people already holding judgeships. The vast majority of judges at all levels of our legal system started their careers as trial attorneys. Trial attorneys make excellent TRIAL court judges. Their knowledge of procedural rules and the rules of evidence and of what being "in the system" does to people stands them in good stead--on the TRIAL bench.
However, being a judge or justice at the appellate level requires different skills. The Constitution does not require any particular career background of Supreme Court justices--indeed, the Constitution doesn't even require them to be lawyers. I hope Obama nominates someone who has great depth of experience and education in widely diverse areas of life; someone who emphasizes how to think, not what to think; someone who is less likely to get hung up on the niceties of procedure and more likely to uphold not just the technical letter of our laws, but the animating spirit behind them.
Given his already-expressed desire to find a nominee who has compassion and empathy, I think the president is off to an excellent start.
Footnote: for all you idiots out there who scream about how judges should not make law, here's a news flash. ALL judges make law. It's inherent in the nature of the job. If judges didn't make law, we wouldn't need a judicial branch of government in the first place. You only dislike judges making law when the results go against your vested interests. But just because they are your vested interests doesn't mean they are correct, or in line with what all our most fundamental documents say America should be. So get over yourselves, shut up for once, and get out of the way. Until you can offer truly constructive, thought-out and on-point criticisms, all you're doing is poisoning the atmosphere. I, for one, am sick of you.
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