An Alternative Short List for the High Court

Is New York Law School's Annette Gordon-Reed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning law professor/historian, on President Obama's Supreme Court "short list"? Or, Alabama lawyer Bryan Stevenson, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award recipient and tireless advocate on behalf of indigent defendants and prisoners? How about veteran consumer rights champion Alan Morrison and University of Notre Dame Law School Dean Patricia O'Hara?

Probably not. But they appear on the short lists of more than a dozen constitutional law and Supreme Court scholars asked by The National Law Journal to step into Obama's shoes to pick a nominee to succeed retiring Justice David Souter. These scholars, who vary ideologically and geographically, most often recommended four women who are reportedly on Obama's short list, giving the most nods to Pamela Karlan, a leading constitutional law scholar, voting rights authority and founding director of the Stanford Law School's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.

"She's young, smart and very witty," said Michael Dorf of Cornell Law School, echoing comments by Richard Primus of the University of Michigan Law School and others. "She's pretty clearly to the left of anyone on the current Court, but is not a throwback to iconic liberals like Earl Warren, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. She would be a liberal for the Obama era, not someone fighting a rear-guard action attempting to preserve the remnant of the Warren Court's jurisprudence."

Close on Karlan's heels with an equal number of recommendations were: constitutional law scholar Kathleen Sullivan, the first female dean of Stanford Law School and now head of the appellate practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges; Judge Diane Wood of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and Solicitor General and former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan. Barely given a nod by those surveyed was Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit, strongly supported by Hispanic groups, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

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