Peering Into The Crystal Ball for Obama’s Judicial Picks
(Plus a live chat with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin)
The current New Yorker has an interesting piece by Jeffrey Toobin on President Obama’s judicial picks. Toobin took part in a live chat about the piece at NewYorker.com right now earlier today if you’re interested. (Try not to crash their website.).
UPDATE: The chat’s quite interesting. Toobin reveals why he likes Justice Souter best and answers this young wannabe judge’s question:
11:31 Guest: I’m a 25 year old law student, I want to be a judge, and my roommate smokes pot. How worried should I be? Do you think people will still care when I’m older?11:32 Jeffrey Toobin: Don’t inhale! I’m kidding. I don’t think it will make a bit of difference. Our president has more or less admitted he was a pretty big pothead in his day, and it’s been a non-issue. Certainly the fact that your roommate smokes — not you — is irrelevant.
Toobin’s piece is available online to non-subscribers here. If you don’t feel like clicking through seven pages, here’s the ATL reader’s digest version:
More bullets, after the jump.
There’s a lot of other stuff — it’s a long piece — but basically Toobin crafts an argument that Obama’s judicial picks ain’t very liberal. And that’s due in part to Obama’s opposition to the political process unfolding in the judicial branch: Political battles should be won during elections, not in the courts. Read the piece, and its definition of the “new liberalism” as exemplified by Obama, here.
One thing we found fun: more detail on the path that could have taken Obama to One First Street instead of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We’ve noted Obama as the “man who got away” from the justices before. Toobin has more on the Supreme Court route that Obama could have taken:
As the outgoing president of the Harvard Law Review, in 1991, Obama could have had his pick of judicial clerkships. “I asked him to apply to clerk for me,” Abner Mikva, a former federal appeals-court judge in Washington, told me. “I was a feeder. At the time, I was sending clerks to work for Brennan, Marshall, Stevens, and Blackmun. I don’t have any doubt that Obama would have got a Supreme Court clerkship if he wanted one.”But Obama decided against taking any clerkship and instead moved back to Chicago, where he joined a small law firm, started teaching law at the University of Chicago, and laid the groundwork for a political career.
Instead of joining the ranks of the Elect, he gets to choose their bosses. Not a bad trade-off.
Bench Press [The New Yorker]
(27) Comments
Comments
Who's First? I AM!!
Ernie Anastos FTW?
Winston made offers.
Could someone here please Autotune me some more George Brett remix? Thanks.
This jackass lies!
Coked up in SC.
"Republicans in the Senate have refused to vote on anyone but Sotomayor."
How does this work when, presumably, a few moderate Republicans would join Democrats in bringing candidates in for an up-or-down vote? Or how did it work when the Democrats had 60 votes? Isn't this just because Reid isn't making it a priority?
Toobin is a TTTOOOL
I think that, absent some *major* scandal, BHO will pull a Taft and end up on SCOTUS at some point after his term(s) are up.
Cue PE post referring to Obama as a Commissar in 3, 2...
" Political battles should be won during elections not in the courts"
Who has been making this argument in almost every opinion he has authored in the last 20 years?
There is no Harriet Miers in the whole group.
QUINN REMAINS
If someone wants to nominate me for a judicial position they can find in a van, down by the river.
in b4 PE
Could someone explain to me how Republicans could possibly be delaying the nomination process? Democrats had 60 votes until Kennedy died, they'll soon have 60 votes again. Any chance Toobin just likes blaming things on Republicans with not a shred of supporting evidence (or even a logical argument)?
Very interesting - more posts like this, please.
Who cares about this? You're all sycophants.
@13 -- you became old very quickly.
LEGALIZE
.
.
CANNABIS
.
.
NOW!!!
Toobin is stoopid.
Obama will no doubt nominate judges who, like him, completely disregard the Constitution in favor of their personal agenda and he will his typical Chicago-style bullying to push them through. No wonder America is having a change of heart about this guy.
Who turns down a feeder judge clerkship? I call bullshit.
toobin is a fucking partisan hack.
Mikva was probably just trying to lower his acceptance rate to boost his prestige.
"And that’s due in part to Obama’s opposition to the political process unfolding in the judicial branch: Political battles should be won during elections, not in the courts."
Where the fuck is Toobin getting this from? Did he just pull this out of his ass, whole cloth?
also, 11:31 Guest sounds like a massive pussy
Are you weirdo attention-freak former Souter clerks going to finally take his picture off your collective walls? Yes, you are so special. We get it. Now, you are old too. I don't keep my finger paintings from kindergarten on my wall. Though, they were almost as awesome as you.