By GottaLaff

I have a lawyer friend on Twitter (he goes by “Rawls”) who read the same L.A. Times article I did, and was very disturbed by it, as I was. He then linked me to a New Yorker piece by Jeffrey Toobin. You can read excerpts of that below.

But first, here are Rawls’ comments from one of my earlier posts, the one about Justice Clarence Thomas’ Tea Bagger wife:

At this juncture I will make the following point (Joe Scarborough loves this style of argument, only I will do it better): Thomas will never recuse himself for this issue. You will see it go away. But, Thomas opinions are, in a light most favorable to him, nonsensical. At the end of the day, he’ll step down when he wants. In the meantime, we need to focus on the crap that will come from the Right when Stevens and Ginsburg step down. The craziest filibuster is yet to come. Write it down. The next two appointments will create a logjam in the Senate you’ve never seen.

He makes a good point.

Now for the little not-so-bitty unnoticed news item that has bothered us so much:

An early chance for the Obama administration to reshape the nation’s judiciary — and counter gains made in the federal courts by conservatives — appears close to slipping away, due to a combination of White House inattention and Republican opposition. [...]

During President Obama’s first year, judicial nominations trickled out of the White House at a far slower pace than in President George W. Bush’s first year. Bush announced 11 nominees for federal appeals courts in the fourth month of his tenure. Obama didn’t nominate his 11th appeals court judge until November, his 10th month in office.

Moreover, Obama nominees are being confirmed at a much slower rate than those of his predecessor, largely because of the gridlocked Senate. [...]

If the Democrats lose seats — or if Republicans take control of the body — then Obama likely would be forced to appoint centrist judges more acceptable to the GOP.

There are details, numbers, comparisons, and information that you can read about in that piece. The point is, Bush managed to appoint a lot of judges who are shaping our legal system, and the entire country, and President Obama has not followed suit. He’s been busy, he’s faced gridlock, he’s got people to see, places to go…

But hey.

Our lives are affected by this. Our democracy is affected by this.

And of course, there’s that little Supreme Court issue that will arise. From the New Yorker article:

In Stevens’s absence, leadership of the Court’s liberals would fall, by seniority, to Ginsburg, but she is also elderly and has suffered from a range of health problems. Even if President Obama appointed a like-minded replacement for Stevens, that person, while taking his seat, would not fill his role.

Stevens is an unlikely liberal icon. When he was appointed, he told me recently, he thought of himself as a Republican and always had [...]

But, more than anything, his career shows how the Court has become a partisan battlefield. In that spirit, Roberts last week denounced President Obama’s criticism of the Court in his State of the Union address, saying that the occasion had “degenerated to a political pep rally.” When Stevens leaves, the Supreme Court will be just another place where Democrats and Republicans fight. [...]

I asked him if the center of gravity had moved to the right since he became a Justice. “There’s no doubt,” he said. “You don’t have to ask me that. Look at Citizens United.” He added, “If it is not necessary to decide a case on a very broad constitutional ground, when other grounds are available, then doesn’t that create the likelihood that people will think you’re not following the rules?”[...]

In all areas, Stevens has favored gradual change over sudden lurches and precedent over dramatic overrulings. But, especially since Roberts took over as Chief Justice, Stevens has found himself confronting colleagues who have a very different approach—an aggressive, line-drawing conservatism that appears bent on remaking great swaths of Supreme Court precedent. [...]

In Bush v. Gore, Stevens framed his colleagues’ decision as an insult to the judicial role, one that could, he wrote, “only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.” In words that became better known than anything in the collectively written majority decision, he continued:

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

[...] As for Obama, Stevens said, “I have a great admiration for him, and certainly think he’s capable of picking successfully, you know, doing a good job of filling vacancies.” He added, “You can say I will retire within the next three years. I’m sure of that.”