Supreme Court: I want to know the most progressive picks Obama could do.

Okay I just saw Rachel's show and she tossed out a few names I had to write down. Youtube and VEOH are wonderful sites because I get to see videos of these people talking. That being said, I'm leaning Stevenson but I want to hear more. So I can start touting my pic for SC when the debate gets in full swing.

Give me the names guys...I need the names.

Just like on Rachel's show.

Big/Massive Fight:
Medium Fight (but nominated):
Low Fight (nominated and no problem for Repub fools):

Here's the vid that pushes me towards Stevenson, but there are more: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x263367#263434

Video links would be great too.

Obama tends to be swayed by the rights uproars and the constant babble of Faux and so his decision will once again go with at best a moderate..no chance for a Stevens like progressive. With a right leaning he will still get angry comments from the right but it just wont be as much. Can u imagine if it was a true progressive? World War III.

World War III is gonna happen anyways.

please stop playing the GOP's word games and buying into this false equivalence.

to start with, there is barely a LEFT in america, let alone an equivalent to the mountain of hard-RW shit that overflows every day of every week of every year.

And unfortunately, that statement suggests you're not familiar with the last person he nominated.

Not very transparent, in my opinion.

Just sayin...

I'll keep what you say in mind.

(reportedly), and look how he turned out. Ditto for Justice Souter. My point is that you never know how someone is going to turn out once they are on the Court, because then they are truly free to vote how they want without worrying about leaving a "paper trail" that may someday be used to keep them off the Supreme Court.

President Obama should (and will) pick the person he thinks is most qualifed and someone who excels at persuading others, and not worry so much about how liberal they are. Whomever he picks will be liberal enough.

I'm not speaking on the side of any political affiliation---I should have made that clear in my post.

B-)

Obama is smart enough to know why kind of person he's nominating.

Of who? Nader?

Who, in your opinion, are you referring to?

Whatever. You've shown yourself to be an unrelenting, unreasonable critic of Obama since you've been here. Guess that shouldn't change now.

Go ahead, go get it. I'll wait.

Or not.

I like Diane Wood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Wood

I want an Asian, but I'll take any intelligent progressive.

this, not so much.

http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/57/

Did hell break loose in a gay SCOTUS thread? It's unfortunate. Yes there should be someone gay on the supreme court. If he's going to nominate a gay justice, he may as well make this the year of "the gay" and overturn everything at once.

I personally think we need another minority justice too. Any eligible gay black or asian women out there?

I don't know of any minorities other than the one in Wndycity's thread.

From Wikipedia.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Sullivan

She has also represented Shell Oil in an appeal to limit the company's liability for toxic waste

I think the oil corporations have enough friends on the Supreme Court, considering 6 of the current justices are Bush Crime Family appointees (with Stevens himself being the only one of those 6 not likely to take their side of any issue)

Apparently (from a link on her Stanford page) she's also scheduled to represent Wyeth pharmaceuticals in a case before the SCOTUS next fall (assuming she doesn't get the gig).

Is it too much to ask that we get someone on the Supreme Court who doesn't shill for the very industries that already have too goddamn much influence over the government?


Yeah, I'm sure someone will tell me how I'm "reading too much into this", but when I see the same person defending oil companies "right" to dump toxic waste, and then turn around and argue for pharma companies having no liabilities when their drugs harm children, well that doesn't sound like someone who has the best interests of this country in mind.

will be so close to Stalin, that once again, the "country will cease to exist" if the whomever it is is confirmed. Another round of "Armageddon will descend upon us". Satan will rise up and consume the the first born of true Americans as far as the RW is concerned.

Considering the fight will be ferocious regardless, I hope he nominated a left leaning Progressive with ironclad credentials. Gender, race, religion, sexual orientaion or anything other peripheral should have nothing to do with it...just go for a left leaning justice to try and balance out the damage the RW has done.

the more left leaning the nominee the better the long-term balance on the High Court.

Excellent post.

Eat you heart out. It's going to be someone persuasive who could move Justice Anthony Kennedy to the progressive side.

Goodwin Liu. You can check his background in Google or if you can find it in DU. Senator Dianne Feinstein has already vetted him, since he is from U.C. Berkeley Boalt Hall Law School. I think probably, Justice Stevens has vetted him too. Maybe that is why he feels free to step down. A big guess on my part.

But he is nominated for the 9th Circuit already. He's great, but secondly, I don't think he's judged any cases (<---And this will be his disqualifier).

The reason Justice Stevens feels free to step down has nothing to do with Goodwin Liu. Justice Stevens said in an interview that he feels Obama will make a good choice in picking his successor and he trusts Obama's opinion on that. He had said there was no better President to step down for.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/03/AR2010040301693.html

with Kathleen Sullivan coming in a close second.

He will pick neither.

Their professional credentials are good but nothing jumps out and screams "i'm the most qualified to be the next Justice on the SCOTUS." Neither Karlan nor Sullivan has even been a judge or argued before the Court. That's not to say they would not make excellent nomnees based on factors other than professional qualifications.

and many cases before Federal appeals courts qand state supreme courts. She is also the author of the leading casebook on Constitutional law. I don't think anybody can be called the most qualified candidate, but I don't see how anyone could be claimed to be more qualified than Kathleen Sullivan.

http://www.quinnemanuel.com/attorneys/sullivan-kathleen-m.aspx

because they are academics, something the Court has been lacking for decades. Being an appeals court judge did not used to be a prerequisite for the Supreme Court. Senators, Governors, cabinet members, brilliant legal scholars - all were routinely considered. I would guess that we would agree that Earl Warren was a seminally important Chief Justice who presided over a court that pulled America grudgingly along the road to a far more equal and just society. He was never a judge prior to his service as Chief Justice.

The key for me is legal brilliance along with potential judicial temperament and a history that suggests that a nominee would be independent of both corporate and governmental interests.

http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/32/

"A productive scholar and award-winning teacher, Pamela S. Karlan is also the founding director of the school’s extraordinarily successful Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the Court.' One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission and an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Professor Karlan is the co-author of three leading casebooks on constitutional law and related subjects, as well as more than four dozen scholarly articles."

She has argued cases before the SC. As a clerk to Blackmun, she actually WROTE his dissent in Bowers V Hardwick, a dissent that has become one of the most famous in USSC history. Blackmun himself acknowledged her authorship and history has proven her both prescient and correct.

Kathleen Sullivan is just as brilliant a legal mind as Karlan. She has written extensively on constitutional law and has also argued both before appellate courts and the USSC. She authored the country's leading casebook on constitutional law and is arguably a far greater constitutional scholar than most appellate Judges.

I would like to see Obama appoint someone who is both brilliant and a constitutional scholar, someone who can go toe to toe with Scalia and knock him senseless.

The fact that they are both gay women is irrelevant (though not to the Republicans). And in the short run, it adds to their appeal: why should only heterosexual Justices be deciding matters of great import to tens of millions of gay citizens? Does that population, at long last, not deserve their one-in-nine seat at the table?

n/t

n/t

you haven't been paying attention. He will appoint a middle of the road moderate.

is that ideology is but one of the factors at play. Sure, he wants a left-moderate judge, probably won't pick a hard-leftist judge, and certainly won't pick a strict constitutionalist assclown like Alito or Roberts.

But Obama also uses his constitutional law knowledge, and picks the judge with the best professional qualifications - experience, skill at writing decisions, interpreting the Constitution in non-insane ways, that sort of thing.

That sort of decision-making process got us Justice Sotomayor, who has absolutely impressed me. I hope Obama gets the SCOTUS another justice like her.

I used progressive, not liberal. I see liberal as more along party lines. I used Progressive because I'm speaking of someone with a broad mind and who addresses the issues fairly. I'm not speaking of party politics here or personal inclination.

He'll appoint someone who will vote reliably with the liberal block.

we need a brilliant mind who can appeal to Kennedy's intellectual curiosity.

Right now, and for the forseeable future, this is Anthony Kennedy's court. On split decisions, he is the deciding vote. From everything I've read about him, he actually listens and processes the other Justice's arguments, although obviously he is far, far more conservative than most of us would like. What we need is someone who can make such a compelling, smart case in these situations that Kennedy will actually listen, process and understand.

We don't need just a reliable liberal vote. We need a brilliant, compelling jurist.

a lot of intellectual fire power.

I agree that Kennedy will have increased power.

are Sullivan and Karlan, imho.

You can't get much better than the one who actually wrote the casebook on constitutional law or one who wrote one of the most famous dissents in American history when she was but a clerk.

The fact that they are gay woman is merely icing on the cake. In the best possible world, the Court should have more women and it should have a non-heterosexual. There is something morally untenable about a bunch of straight men having the last word on a woman's reproductive rights.

as the swing vote. I don't think he will be persuaded by anyone on the left if he has certain beliefs. He has voted more with the conservatives on the court then the liberals. I don't think the court will change much in the time being. Not until Scalia or Kennedy is gone. They are 74 and 73, the next oldest after Ginsburg. She is next, with not so great health and being 77.

She's a liberal judge. She's not a middle-of-the-road moderate.


It's YOU who haven't paid attention.

But if you look at her record, you will see that she is not.

where she refused to extend federal protections to decisions made by state officials.

Sotomayor is far from liberal.

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I elected Obama to pick a good candidate and now im going to let him do his job. And a fine job he is doing thanks.

one of their own. His record is more progressive than most of the top names floated. Besides, justices with some experience in elective office have tended to be better at crafting coalitions for their opinions. Brennan and Warren would be two examples of effection coalition builders who held elective office prior to being named to the court.