As a Professor, Obama Held Pragmatic Views on Court :NYT interesting article

[mucifer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/us/politics/03obama.html?_r=1&hp

(lots of interviews of former students and collegues at the University of Chicago law school in this article).

By JODI KANTOR
Published: May 2, 2009

Many American presidents have been lawyers, but almost none have come to office with Barack Obama’s knowledge of the Supreme Court. Before he was 30, he was editing articles by eminent legal scholars on the court’s decisions. Later, as a law professor, he led students through landmark cases from Plessy v. Ferguson to Bush v. Gore. (He sometimes shared his own copies, marked with emphatic underlines and notes in bold, all-caps script.)

Now Mr. Obama is preparing to select his first Supreme Court nominee to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. In interviews, former colleagues and students say they have a fairly strong sense of the kind of justice he will favor: not a larger-than-life liberal to counter the conservative pyrotechnics of Justice Antonin Scalia, but a careful pragmatist with a limited view of the role of courts.

“His nominee will not create the proverbial shock and awe,” said Charles J. Ogletree, a Harvard professor who has known the president since his days as a student. ...snip

[JayMusgrove]

1. Very interesting perspective and facts about

Obama and his career as a legal scholar.

I think he will have a rather easy job picking the first nominee, it's the third and fourth where he may have to work a little harder.

[vaberella]

2. Pragmatism is the abject failure for many "progessives" &/or "leftists."

Thankfully our Pres has it in spades and I completely agree in the role of the Supreme Court to be as minimal as possible because they fuck us up...such as in Madrigal v Quilligan.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Damn. We need the mirror image of Scalia

To start undoing the damage.

[vaberella]

4. I think that's the whole point. We'd do more damage with appointing a mirror image of Scalia.

The article talks about how O even sees Progressives/Leftists as falling into the same mess that the extremely conservative do in relation to the law. He's going to look for someone practical and who understands the law, respects it, but doesn't get easily pushed by "radical feelings."

[Clio the Leo]

5. If the President nominates someone on the far left I will eat a bug.

If someone asked me to describe the President in only one sentence, I could not do a better job than this...

"And more than anything else, he is a pragmatist who urged those around him to be more keenly attuned to the real-life impact of decisions."

[LooseWilly]

6. I will eat a bug if the president nominates someone on the far left, too.

I'll even let him pick the bug. Worm, spider, tick... whatever. I can take it. (I'll ask that a scorpion have it's stinger removed first though... if that's the pick.)
I'll eat two grasshoppers. Mmmm, chapulines....

[Clio the Leo]

7. Yeah, I have a pretty high gag reflex....

... so my promise to eat a bug wasn't THAT big of a bet. :)

But it also allows me to watch the great "GOP fight out who's gonna rescue America at a pizza restaurant" as I'm about to do. lol