The Supreme Court takes a global warming case....

... with Justice Sonia Sotomayor recusing herself. American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut involves the use of a common law theory of nuisance:

[Five companies] that were claimed to be the largest sources of greenhouse gases — four electric power companies and the Tennessee Valley Authority — were sued by eight states, New York City, and three land conservation groups...

Calling the potential impact of the nuisance theory “staggering,” the companies’ petition said that virtually every entity and industry in the world can be found to be partly responsible for some emissions of carbon dioxide, so they are potentially liable to be sued in climate changed nuisance lawsuits.

When it comes to carbon dioxide, we're all a damned nuisance.

“Neither Steve Breyer nor Ruth Ginsburg has much of a purchase on Tony Kennedy’s mind.”

That's actually the most embarrassing sentence in Larry Tribe's letter to Obama about who to nominate to the Supreme Court.

I love the use of the noun "purchase," meaning, not something you buy, but "A means of increasing power or influence" or "An advantage that is used in exerting one's power." That's the 5th definition of the noun in the 3d edition of the American Heritage Dictionary. Here are some other, related definitions:

2. A grip applied manually or mechanically to move something or prevent it from slipping.

3. A device, such as a tackle or lever, used to obtain mechanical advantage.

4. A position, as of a lever or one's feet, affording a means to move or secure a weight.

You get the idea of the image Tribe had of Kennedy's brain? If you read the whole letter — PDF — you'll see that Tribe thought Justice Souter had "purchase," and he was worried that without Souter, Kennedy would roll toward the "Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomos wing of the Court." He thought Elena Kagan — and not Sonia Sotomayor — would operate — as a tackle or lever? — to move "Tony Kennedy's mind."

Kagan, Tribe said, had a way of "gently but firmly persuading a bunch of prima donnas to see things her way in case after case." Of course, he was referring to the prima donna professors at Harvard Law School, and mainly talking about new faculty appointments, which is quite different from persuading Supreme Court Justices about interpretations of law. It's one thing to build a law school community where professors can spout diverse ideologies and still feel like it's a happy, functioning institution. It's quite another to amass votes for a legal proposition that produces an outcome in a case and binds all the courts in the United States.

And if the target of a light touch knows that the most powerful man in the world has selected that approach to prying his brain into a particular political direction, that target ought to become highly vigilant and not get played.

... I think it's clear that a Justice Kagan would be a much more formidable match for Justice Scalia than Justice Breyer has been... in the kinds of public settings in which it has been all to easy for Scalia to make his rigid and unrealistic formalism seem synonymous with the rule of law and to make Breyer's pragmatism seem mushy and unconstrained by comparison.

Tribe says Kagan will be "simultaneously progressive yet principled, pragmatic and yet constrained." That sounds like pragmatism. How does it not "seem mushy" like Breyer's pragmatism? Because it's asserted to be "constrained," while Breyer's pragmatism "seem[s]... unconstrained"? Because it's progressive — steadily aimed in one direction and not more subtly varied?

I'm sure Justice Kennedy doesn't need to be tipped off to this political scheme to clamber over the crusty crags of the convolutions of his brain. But Tribe's letter is amusing reading nonetheless.

"It was just a pro se prisoner petition in a big stack of IFPs that normally would be short-formed with a quick 'Splitless, factbound, I recommend DENY.'"

Orin Kerr puzzles over Justice Sotomayor's "rather remarkable dissent from denial of certiorari in Pitre v. Cain, a pro se Eighth Amendment case brought by a prison inmate whose case was dismissed as “patently frivolous” by the trial court and affirmed by the Fifth Circuit in a short one-paragraph order.

The opinion begins:

Petitioner Anthony Pitre, a Louisiana state prisoner, stopped taking his HIV medication to protest his transfer to a prison facility. He alleges that respondents at the facility punished him for this decision by subjecting him to hard labor in 100-degree heat. According to Pitre, respondents repeatedly denied his requests for lighter duty more appropriate to his medical condition, even after prison officials twice thought his condition sufficiently serious to rush him to an emergency room.

This is the empathy we heard about, is it not?

The Magistrate Judge concluded that Pitre had been “‘hoist by his own petard’”...

And that's not empathy.

"By the time this thing would reach the Supreme Court Obama's going to have amnesty. He's s going to have all these brand-new Democrat voters."

Rush Limbaugh rails against the federal court decision preliminarily enjoining the Arizona immigration law:

The judge is a Clinton appointee, Susan Bolton, and I remember, after it was reported or learned that she was a Clinton appointee, I remember everybody said, "Ah, but this woman, she's not a political judge. She's really not partisan judge. She's a fair judge." Oh, yeah, right. Right, right, right, right....

This judge has not ruled on the law. There is no racial profiling. We didn't make a [big] deal of it because we figure a judge is gonna look at the law, not the stupid media in making her decision. But she listened to the media. She had to ignore the high bar that was not met in staying the law. This underscores why Sonia Sotomayor should not be on the Supreme Court. This underscores why Elena Kagan should not be on the Supreme Court, because they are activists. They have no judicial temperament, judicial experience, they're not judges. Well, Sotomayor pretended to be one on TV, I guess, but she's not....

This is all reacting to the sudden news of the opinion, which he hasn't read. It's 36 pages long, and "there's no way that I'm going to be able to go through all 36 pages prior to the program ending, but I know what went on here":

[The judge has] bought the notion there was racial profiling and discrimination and all this happy horse manure that's part of the American left these days. So that's pretty much it. I guess the judge is saying it's not in the public interest for Arizona to try to defend itself from an invasion. I don't know how you look at this with any sort of common sense and come to the ruling this woman came to. But, she didn't. She's a leftist and she made an activist decision, not a judicial decision. 

So... Judge Bolton just looks at the hot-button issue and emotes without attending to the text that should govern her opinion... asserts Rush Limbaugh as he takes a glance at the news of the decision and let's his feelings flow.

To quote Rush, out of context, from the middle of that rant: "Nothing, nothing in the media is real.  There is nothing real.  Media is not real. [Political ideology] is not real. It's all spin; it's all fake; it's all lies."

Remaining silent is not an invocation of the right to remain silent.

Says the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, Berghuis v. Thompkins.

''Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police,'' [wrote Justice Kennedy for the Court]. ''Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent.''....

''Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent -- which counterintuitively, requires them to speak,'' [wrote Justice Sotomayor for the dissenters]. ''At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.''

ADDED: Pinkerton predicted it:

Has Obama failed to nominate a strongly liberal Supreme Court Justice because of the insufficient supply of liberal law professors?

Recounting the history of Harvard's struggle with Critical Legal Studies in the 1980s and the "postradical" period that followed, lawprof David Fontana writes:

The stories of the postradical generation are not only of intellectual interest but also affect the future of American government. Obama has been criticized by many for not nominating enough theoretically ambitious and bold liberals to the federal courts. Part of the reason for that dynamic, however, has less to do with politics than with the supply of such theoretically ambitious liberals—particularly law professors.

Many of the more-radical jurisprudential movements from the earlier generations have succeeded in opening eyes to the flaws in the legal system, but beyond that have largely disappeared. The Old Left efforts to push courts to be more aggressively liberal floundered after years of courts dominated by Republican appointees. The New Left efforts by the critical-legal-studies movement and others floundered, in part because, like with the Old Left, their ideas were met with sustained resistance from the elite institutions of the legal system.

Spare me! There are plenty of strongly liberal and lefty lawprofs and if you want theoretical ambition you can find it. The reason these folks don't get nominated to the Supreme Court is crushingly obviously because they'd be soundly rejected by the American people and borked in the Senate.

The country has moved to the right, so there are fewer law professors who are truly liberals. 

Yeah, there's a little balance now. I can imagine what "truly liberal" means to Fontana. I think they're nearly all liberal from the standard that prevails among American voters, but that's not truly liberal.

Many of those on the left today are simply trying to maintain older decisions... Others on the left, who once might have aggressively pursued liberal legal ideas, are now increasingly writing about law from a more theoretical or quantitative, and therefore less practical, perspective—making their writing less related to the issues judges decide and making them less obviously candidates for future judgeships.

And some on the left who write more directly about cases and courts, like Tushnet or Dean Larry Kramer of Stanford Law School, and Dean Robert C. Post of Yale Law School, are now increasingly members of the "popular constitutionalism" movement, who believe that courts should be stripped of all or most of their decisional powers—hardly the prejudicial profile that one wants.

"Prejudicial"? I know what he meant to say but... what a hilarious word!

Anyway, yes, many brilliant liberal/lefty lawprofs have applied their minds to generating arguments for why courts shouldn't enforce rights, but I think the reason they have gone in that direction is that they have perceived that it is the most effective way to push back against the conservative and liberal-but-not-truly-liberal jurists who get appointed to the Supreme Court. The "popular constitutionalism" movement is further evidence that the American people have a pretty conservative view of what judges should do and how the Constitution should be interpreted. And that's why the nominees aren't "theoretically ambitious and bold liberals."

I'm in the NYT.

Here.

"Kagan is so Manhattan, Scalia is so Queens, Ginsburg is so Brooklyn and Sotomayor is so Bronx."

When Kagan is confirmed, there will be 4 Justices from New York City — but they're not all from the same place. Each is from a different borough, and that makes them, in fact, very different. Immense diversity.

"A big debate on the Constitution, a serious debate, actually, in the Senate this year would be good for Republicans..."

And therefore Republicans will and should oppose any Supreme Court nominee Obama comes up with — even "a very respectable choice" like Elena Kagan — says Bill Kristol.

Watch/read the diavlog. It's very funny, because Juan Williams tries to push Kristol back: How is it that a conservative President gets to "nominate very conservative people to the court like the chief justice," and the conservatives expect Democratic Senators to vote for him because he's very highly qualified, and "then when a liberal president" gets his turn they get to put up opposition and won't vote for the nominee simply based merely on her very high qualifications? That sounds like a great argument, but the parry is pathetically easy:

Who voted against Justice Roberts and Justice Alito? A senator from Illinois named Barack Obama. Also a Senator from Delaware named Joe Biden. I don't think Barack Obama and Joe Biden can very well say about these two extremely well qualified nominees they voted against that Republicans in the Senate and conservatives in the country aren't entitled to say, "We respect Elena Kagan," or, "We respect Diane Wood..." [but...]

You can't say let's stop noticing how political it is now, when I've got the political power.

And, of course, conservatives are always up — or should always be up — for a debate about how their approach to constitutional interpretation is properly and neutrally judicial and it's only the the liberal's approach that is political. That's not quite true, but the general public is immensely receptive, and the liberals know it. That's why, when their nominee comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, regardless of the reason why she was picked — e.g., her empathy with the poor and the unfortunate — she is not going to open up and defend liberal constitutional jurisprudence. She is going to do her best imitation of John Roberts.

And that's why Bill Kristol is crushingly right: "A big debate on the Constitution, a serious debate" will benefit Republicans.

Mourning the loss of Desiree Rogers as White House social secretary.

It's Robin Givhan, crying for fashion:

When the Obamas announced that the New Orleans native with the platinum résumé and the knack for glamorous style would be the White House's first African American social secretary, the fashion industry practically swooned. The nation's capital, dominated for 20 years by administrations that, at best, endured fashion, now had a first lady who chose her designer wardrobe like a savvy insider. She and her husband hired a host of attractive young staffers who didn't mind posing for the occasional fashion spread -- Birkin bag in hand, feet shod in trendy platform heels -- and a social secretary who knew the difference between Nina Ricci and Lanvin and regularly wore both. The industry could not believe its good fortune! At long last, it had a diverse array of intelligent and respected women in federal Washington who, by their appearance alone, served as powerful advocates for an often-maligned business.

Hired a host of attractive young staffers... You mean they practiced lookism?

Was Rogers engaging in what one magazine editor described as "an arrogance of style" -- using her clothes for competitive one-upmanship rather than to exude personal creativity, self-confidence or self-respect?
Or could a city of wonks and political animals simply not grasp what Rogers was saying?

In federal Washington, after all, a modest Armani suit still can get one a best-dressed award. For that crowd, taking the measure of Rogers, a special assistant to the president, dressed in Prada and Jil Sander, would have been a bit like someone trying to make sense of an NFL team's strategy diagram based on their knowledge of Foosball.

I certainly can't understand what Givhan is saying about why Rogers lost her job. It was too hard to understand the high level of sophistication of her fashion?  I'm trying to read between the lines as Givhan obviously means to lavishly promote Rogers. Was the problem that Rogers created the wrong image for the Obamas and made them look profligate and frivolous?

After the jump, I read some more sources and summarize a few theories. 



Here's what the NYT Caucus blog said:

[Rogers] came under fire after uninvited guests made their way into the first Obama state dinner...

And she didn't appear at the congressional investigation of the incident — supposedly because the White House didn't let her.

Some detractors also faulted her for breaking unspoken rules of the job — dressing in eye-catching designer-wear and assigning herself a seat at the state dinner.

Could it really be that she dressed too well? Too conspicuously well? Too it's-all-about-me well?

“It has nothing to do with being glamorous, that is all make-believe in the eyes of the press. This is who I am, this is how I dress, I’ve always dressed this way, it’s all a matter of your taste,” she said.

I just can't buy this don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful routine. But if there is lookism to begin with, there might be backlash against the conspicuously beautiful.

Ms. Rogers says she is leaving the White House with a framework for mounting events that are not only glittering but socially meaningful. She recalled in particular a concert of Latin music several months ago. “To see the Latin entertainers perform, to see them keep them looking back at the White House, and be able to do that in front of the newly elected Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, there’s nothing more rewarding,” she said.

Hmmm. Does that kind of thing ever become embarrassing? Endlessly pointing at a person's ethnicity? Having people assume that your taste in things like music follow your ancestry? Most people don't even want to hear their parents' music.

Here are Anne Kornblut and Krissah Thompson in WaPo:

[B]eing [a Washington] outsider ... helped undo Rogers, whose runway outfits and magazine shoots -- and an I-make-my-own-rules attitude -- drew criticism from political circles and within corners of the administration. Her lack of familiarity with the ways of Washington culminated in the State Dinner disaster last December, when two poseurs crashed the party and dominated headlines for weeks.

Now, in replacing Rogers, the White House has tapped a savvy insider with a track record of managing political egos and staging huge political events. In naming Julianna Smoot, who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Democratic candidates, and presided over the Obama campaign's nearly half-billion haul, the administration has placed a person highly skilled in "donor maintenance" at the center of running the White House social operation. Smoot, who has been working as chief of staff of U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, becomes the gatekeeper for the guest lists for any number of exclusive events with the president and first lady.

So, it sounds like maybe it's part of Phase 2 of the Obama Presidency: The Reelection Campaign. Rogers was Phase 1: The Inauguration Celebration. Under this theory, which is probably the best one, it wasn't about the clothes, it was simply that donor maintenance had to take precedence over the beautiful people.

"[Smoot] has no problem dealing with quote-unquote 'important people,' but she doesn't put herself up on a pedestal," Democratic strategist Steve Hildebrand said of Smoot. "She doesn't see herself as a member of the social elite, and she certainly shies away from press." When Rogers wore a Commes des Garcon gown to the state dinner for the Indian prime minister, she garnered as much attention throughout the media as Michelle Obama, which was noted with some displeasure inside the White House.

Oh, there's an angle! Michelle needed to be the prettiest. There is the rift, perhaps.

Some of the rules are more explicit than others. "A social secretary's job is to help the first family put their own social mark on the White House," Sheila Tate, Nancy Reagan's former press secretary, told Daily Beast columnist Sandra McElwaine. "If it becomes about them," the social secretary and his or her staffers, "then there's a problem."

And here's Danielle Belton at Se7en Magazine:  

Boooo! Hissss! The HATERZ won!

As long-time readers know, I love Desiree Rogers. I love all Michelle's homies who rolled into D.C. wanting to set the world on fire in three inch heels. I think they're AWESOME. Look at this woman! Just look at her! She is fierce. Yeah, folks complained with there "Just WHO does that woman think she is?" She knows who she is! She's mutha frakkin' Desiree Rogers! The men all PAUSE when she walks into a room!...

My girl Dezzie just rolls out of a feather bed of opulent ridiculousness and strolls through life on a pair of Sparkle Ponies called "Brains" and "Sex Appeal." That's just her EVERYDAY. Yeah, you're looking at it and you're checking it out. She can't help she's a star and you just want to gaze upon her! Stars are supposed to shine like that!

So you wanted her to be humble and beg you to love her? I'm sorry. Zulu Queens don't DO that. They don't beg. They don't cry. They don't ask for permission. They don't play nice....

Desiree, on the behalf of mere mortals everywhere I just want to say I'm sorry that the world could not handle such an incredible magnitude of New Orleans-by-the-way-of-Chitown black girl savvy. (Don't slap her, because she's NOT in the mood.) And I'm sorry that the awesome was so great that folks had to get all pearl clutchy and go "That WOMAN is TOUCHING our THINGS!" about you being in the White House.... Folks just mad because you can't kick Michelle Obama out the house, so you'll just break out the long-knives on her long-time friend and associate and get all junior high on it. 

So it's not Michelle?

[Desiree is] leaving and taking all her fabulousness with her... Watch the next social secretary be some boring hump who never says anything worth quoting and doesn't know her Kors from her Balenciaga....

And Zennie62 is such a Rogers fan that he trashes Robin Givhan for being too critical:

Rogers caved in to the black haters group or "BHG"; a set of African Americans in and around Washingon D.C. who acted as if they were jealous of Rogers' role as the first African American White House Social Secretary....

... Washington Post Staff Writer and Fashion Editor Robin Givhan, who is seen as another member of the BHG... and spends much of her column essentially trashing Rogers for being confident, extroverted, and attractive...

But the biggest, most powerful member of the BHG is Desiree Rogers herself, and with respect to her decision to listen to that crowd. By doing so, Rogers robs herself of the chance to grow in the position and fails to leave a positive legacy of work as White House Social Secretary. Every time Rogers name comes up, and her accomplishments are discussed, the conversation will always be followed by "yeah, but" and that's too bad.

Meanwhile, the next White House Social Secretary is reportedly a white woman, thus calming the fears of the BHG, who can't stand to see someone black, female, confident, and extroverted in a role they  think should be filled by a  white female who remembered to invite them to the next State Dinner.

Hmmm. That strikes me as a tad overemotional. How much love do you need if you perceive Givhan as a hater? The drama!

All right, that's enough for me. As I said above, if I have to pick, I'm saying it's about getting serious about reelection. Second best theory: Michelle demanded (and deserved) to be the most fabulous woman in the White House.

"I can’t tell you the number of people who come up to me and hug and kiss me and touch me, and some of them in tears."

"I wish there was a way of keeping that without the commercialization of me. Because when I spoke my words I spoke them freely, and I never intended for people to make money off them, because that seems wrong to me."

The words were "Wise Latina."

"Now, if they put a noisy hot dog stand that keeps you up at night, doesn't that violate the statute?"

"Well, you can have quiet hot dog stands during the daytime."

Justices Breyer and Scalia concern themselves with hot dogs (transcript PDF) in a case about whether public access to newly added beach is a "taking" of the property of homeowners who previously had private beach extending all the way to the water:

“You didn’t lose one inch,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer told the lawyer for the owners, D. Kent Safriet. “All you lost was the right to touch the water. But the court here says you in effect have that right because you can walk right over it and get to the water.”

The new strip of land is as wide as 75 feet in places, and the public has access to it.

“If somebody wanted to put up a hot dog stand on this new land,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked, “would you have the right to tell them they can’t?”

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Safriet answered.

Justice Breyer said the relevant law did protect the owners’ right to enjoy their land in peace, meaning they could at a minimum ban “a noisy hot dog stand that keeps you up at night.”

Justice Antonin Scalia found the middle ground, as it were. “You can have quiet hot dog stands during the daytime,” he said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor added that even before the beach project, “a hot dog stand could have sat in the water.”

The Supreme Court opened its new Term yesterday, and the big question, of course, is...

... how much did Sonia Sotomayor speak up?

... an inquisitive new justice... displayed no reticence.... she asked as many questions and made as many comments as...  was far more active Monday than in her first hearing as a justice...was part of an animated bench... Sotomayor's active questioning...

I guess it can't be helped. Everyone's hungry for something about the new Justice.

The case — Maryland v. Shatzer —was about when police may question of a person who has asked for a lawyer.  The basic rule is that the police must stop asking questions until the lawyer is brought in. But the problem here is whether there's ever an end to the proscription against more questions. What if years have passed? What if there is new evidence and a new investigation?

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. posed this hypothetical: What if someone was arrested for joy riding in Maryland, invoked his Fifth Amendment protection, and was never convicted? Could police in Montana question him as a murder suspect in Montana 10 years later?

When Davis said no, Alito replied: "And you don't think that's a ridiculous application of the rule?"

When Alito raised the hypothetical ante to a crime committed 40 years later, Sotomayor joined in.

"He is arrested for joy riding, he is let go, and you are saying that for 20, 40 years he is now immunized from being re-approached by the police?" Sotomayor asked.

So Alito asked a great question and Sotomayor repeated it.

Can we infer, then, that she didn't ask any interesting questions?

IN THE COMMENTS: Scott said:

Can we infer, then, that she is a parrot?

MadisonMan said:

Can we infer, then, that she is a parrot?

Sonia Sotomayor has collected 2 severed heads.

Nice work, Sonia!

Sotomayor and baseball (and Brad Snyder).

On the occasion of Sonia Sotomayor's throwing out the first pitch at a Yankee game, Tony Mauro talks to my colleague Brad Snyder:

The University of Wisconsin Law School professor has written extensively about the long relationship between the Supreme Court and baseball, and he already thinks Sotomayor is "the most important federal judge in the history of baseball besides Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis." Sotomayor's 1995 ruling as a federal district court judge ending the baseball strike...

Judge Landis... was the first federal judge to become known as having "saved baseball," back in 1915. The Federal League had filed an antitrust challenge to Major League baseball, claiming it was a huge illegal trust. Knowing it was a hot potato, Landis sat on the case without acting on it until the Federal League folded. Landis then became baseball commissioner. "Justice Sotomayor is a much better judge than Judge Landis," said Snyder.

And here, you can buy Brad's excellent books: "Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball" and "A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports."

Let's analyze this picture of Obama and the Justices (and Biden).

Keep in mind that this is the shot the White House chose to put up on its Flickr page. (There's also this pic of Obama shaking hands with his appointee Sonia Sotamayor — with Scalia looking thoroughly delighted.)


(Enlarge.)

That's Biden, on the left, with his back to the camera, talking to Breyer and Roberts. The charming Roberts looks charmed by the gasbag VP, while Breyer — though more liberal than Roberts — looks like he's sleeping on his feet.

The short hulk by himself with his back to the camera is Scalia. Also alone, lurking in the background, is the newest Justice, Sonia Sotomayor. Or is Ruth Bader Ginsburg back there too (in the ladies section?) out of camera range?

Brooding over on the extreme right are Justice Thomas and Alito.

In the center, there's the President. As Stevens looks on, Obama laughs at Justice Kennedy's vain effort to enlist the Prez in a game of pattycake. Oh! Pattycake! Such fun!

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt says:

Imagine holding a party. Your spouse takes pictures. When the guests leave, you say, "I'll email a group picture to you all."

The guests check their email accounts the next morning to find a picture wherein all of them have their backs to the camera or are by some other means obscured. Except you. You stand, fully visible, smiling broadly, center frame.

He he he.

"[T]he silly and democratically harmful fiction that a judge can interpret the key abstract clauses of the United States Constitution..."

"... without making controversial judgments of political morality in the light of his or her own political principles."

By embracing that fiction — Ronald Dworkin says — Sonia Sotomayor squandered a precious opportunity to talk to people seriously about what constitutional intepretation really is.

If Justice Stevens retires, won't Obama need to appoint a Protestant?

I know people have trouble looking at the issue of religious diversity on the Supreme Court. I raised this question when Justice Souter stepped down, and Obama's nomination put a 6th Catholic on the Court.

Here I am on a May, 4, 2009 Bloggingheads with Emily Bazelon, raising the question question of religious diveristy in the wake of the Souter retirement. (This recorded on May, 4, 2009 , before Obama had nominated Sotormayor.)



Now, Justice Stevens is the only Justice who was raised in the Protestant tradition. The other 2 Justices are Jewish. I anticipate that there will be little discussion of this, but I find it hard to believe that Obama will not see the lack of diversity as a problem and choose a Protestant.

"Wise Latina" junk for purchase and ego-boosting.

And condescending admiration from the New York Times.

A toast to now-Justice Sotomayor.

To the appearance of empathy and experience that caught the President's eye! To all the sober obeisance to the dispassionate, neutral articulation of the law that won confirmation in the Senate!