NPR: How High Court Could Change If Stevens Retires (w audio)

[usregimechange]

In the March 22 issue of The New Yorker, legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin profiles Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court's longest-serving member.

Stevens, who will celebrate his 90th birthday on April 20, was appointed to the court in 1975 by President Gerald Ford and, as Toobin writes, "is a generation or two away from most of his colleagues; when Roberts served as a law clerk to William H. Rehnquist, Stevens had already been a Justice for five years." Speculation is growing that Stevens will step down from the court at the end of the current term, in June 2010.

"Last fall he had announced that he had only hired one law clerk, which suggested to a lot of people that instead of hiring the customary four, he was really moving towards retirement," Toobin tells Fresh Air host Terry Gross. "So I asked him, 'Are you going to retire at the end of this term?' And he said he hadn't completely made up his mind. He said his law clerks had agreed to serve longer, if he wanted them to, but it was certainly my impression that he is leaning towards retiring very soon."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124597191


Audio:
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=124597191&m=124696720

[kenny blankenship]

1. SCOTUS will shift to the right

[usregimechange]

3. I don't think it will but if it does it will be very difficult to get my help for 2012

[kenny blankenship]

7. Don't you think the nominee will be a "sensible moderate"?

in other words, someone well to the right of the Nixon-Ford era justice they'll replace? That won't do anything but continue the SCOTUS' long slide to the right, even if at some point there are a majority of Democratic appointees. The question with this President and party is only the rate at which the Court goes right.

[Supersedeas]

2. it certainly will be different without Stevens as a balance to those on the far right

[usregimechange]

4. Toobin: "Conservatives used to be associated with the term judicial restraint"

Not any more.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. No, the courts current right wing ballance will remain...

Obama is not going to appoint a ravening right winger to the court. Maybe, should Obama have a second term, he will ge the chance to tip the ballance back. But I suspect we will see the court remain right of center for at least 12 years.

[Bitwit1234]

6. Since Obama has the authority to appoint

a new justice why in the devil would it go to the right...He wouldn't appoint a republican. We need democrats with independent and bi-partiasam leanings.