FRIDAY, APRIL 09, 2010
Justice John Paul Stevens is retiring
CNN is reporting the news that Justice Stevens is retiring. This wasn't completely unexpected. He's 90. But, CNN confirms that the retirement will occur this summer.So, we'll be having a confirmation battle over the next couple months.
From AP:
From AP:
Stevens says he will step down when the court finishes its work for the summer in late June or early July.
His announcement Friday in Washington had been hinted at for months. It comes 11 days before his 90th birthday.
Stevens began signaling a possible retirement last summer when he hired just one of his usual complement of four law clerks for the next court term. He acknowledged in several interviews that he was contemplating stepping down and would certainly do so during Obama's presidency.
The timing of his announcement leaves ample time for the White House to settle on a successor and Senate Democrats, who control 59 votes, to conduct confirmation hearings and a vote. Republicans have not ruled out an attempt to delay confirmation.
The leading candidates to replace Stevens are Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 49, and federal appellate Judges Merrick Garland, 57, and Diane Wood, 59.
This will turn out to be a very tough and arduous battle for President Obama. The lack of 60 votes in the Senate in order to head off a filibuster will be problematic. One can certainly hope that a Moderate Republican like Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins would cross the aisle in order to avoid a stalemate. After the very contentious debate over health care, expectations are extremely dim.
The question now remains whether the President will have to set side some of the values the Democratic party views as essential in order to find a compromise candidate palatable to all sides of the political spectrum. As a progressive Liberal, I would like to see the appointment of an Asian American or an African American candidate in order to continue expanding the diversity within the court. One can not forget the drawn-out process we went through with the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor. Certainly the worse could be expected.
One would imagine Americans expecting and demanding from Congress a Jurist that holds diversity, equal opportunity, civil rights and fairness as the the most important tenets of the Law. The acrimonious pandering and bickering will come in as the extreme right continues to define the most valuable tenets of the law as the ones that undermine equality rights, fair election practices and equal opportunity and promote laws geared to the monopoly and expansion of multi national companies and profit, deregulation and lesser gun control laws.
-George David Perezvelez
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