Sunday, July 17, 2005
A Female Nominee to the SCOTUS
From the Weekly Standard:
...Last Thursday, senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, along with Barbara Boxer of California and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, sent a letter to Justice O'Connor urging her to reconsider her retirement, and suggesting that she accept a nomination for the allegedly about-to-be-open position of chief justice. But the senators are behind the times. They are captive to a reactionary feminism that may have been plausible when Justice O'Connor was appointed in 1981 from a very short list of possible female candidates for the Court. Today, if the president wanted to replace not just Justice O'Connor with a capable, proven constitutionalist who is a woman, but also Chief Justice Rehnquist (when he steps down) and for that matter Justice Stevens or Justice Ginsburg (when either steps down), he could do so.
For now, he just has to worry about the O'Connor vacancy. For that seat, President Bush would improve the Court by appointing any from a long list of well-qualified women. Among them are federal appellate judges like Edith Jones, Edith Brown Clement, and Priscilla Owen on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Janice Rogers Brown on the D.C. Circuit, Karen Williams on the 4th Circuit, and Alice Batchelder on the 6th Circuit; distinguished law professors like Mary Anne Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard, and Lillian R. BeVier, John S. Shannon Professor of Law at Virginia; and state court judges like the impressive Maura D. Corrigan, who served on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1992 to 1998, and has been on the Michigan Supreme Court since then, including a stint as chief justice. And the list goes on....
...Last Thursday, senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, along with Barbara Boxer of California and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, sent a letter to Justice O'Connor urging her to reconsider her retirement, and suggesting that she accept a nomination for the allegedly about-to-be-open position of chief justice. But the senators are behind the times. They are captive to a reactionary feminism that may have been plausible when Justice O'Connor was appointed in 1981 from a very short list of possible female candidates for the Court. Today, if the president wanted to replace not just Justice O'Connor with a capable, proven constitutionalist who is a woman, but also Chief Justice Rehnquist (when he steps down) and for that matter Justice Stevens or Justice Ginsburg (when either steps down), he could do so.
For now, he just has to worry about the O'Connor vacancy. For that seat, President Bush would improve the Court by appointing any from a long list of well-qualified women. Among them are federal appellate judges like Edith Jones, Edith Brown Clement, and Priscilla Owen on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Janice Rogers Brown on the D.C. Circuit, Karen Williams on the 4th Circuit, and Alice Batchelder on the 6th Circuit; distinguished law professors like Mary Anne Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard, and Lillian R. BeVier, John S. Shannon Professor of Law at Virginia; and state court judges like the impressive Maura D. Corrigan, who served on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1992 to 1998, and has been on the Michigan Supreme Court since then, including a stint as chief justice. And the list goes on....
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