And the Nominees Might Be . . .

In a high-profile case, she issued an order allowing the Wall Street Journal to publish Vince Foster's suicide note.

On June 25, 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the seat she now holds, which was vacated by J. Daniel Mahoney.
(The Atlantic 1 May 2009)

In her rulings, Sotomayor has often shown suspicion of bloated government and corporate power. She's offered a reinterpretation of copyright law, ruled in favor of public access to private information, and in her most famous decision, sided with labor in the Major League Baseball strike of 1995. More than anything else, she is seen as a realist. With a likely 20 years ahead on the bench, she'll have plenty of time to impart her realist philosophy.
(Esquire)

And because Sotomayor has a reputation for staying behind the scenes and sits on a federal bench known for its centrism, it's likely that she would be able to garner a two-thirds majority in the Senate, even if the Democrats only control an estimated 55 or so seats. Plus there's an insurance measure if the nomination gets too politicized publicly: Sotomayor was appointed to the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush. Says Tushnet, "If you're a Democratic strategist, you can gin up ads that say, 'She was good enough for George H. W. Bush. Why isn't she good enough for Mitch McConnell?'" (rightpundits.com)

LEAH WARD SEARS
graduate of Cornell University (B.S. Degree); a 1980 graduate of Emory University School of Law (J.D. Degree); and a 1995 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law (LL.M Degree).

She was the first African-American woman to serve as Superior Court Judge in Georgia. When appointed by the Governor of Georgia in February, 1992, she was the first woman and the youngest person ever to serve on Georgia's Supreme Court. Also, in retaining her appointed position as a Supreme Court Justice, Justice Sears became the first woman to win a contested state-wide election in Georgia.

Chief Justice Sears says she and others stared down discrimination and stereotypes, even in the courthouse halls.

"I would walk around some parts of Georgia and have people come up and ask, 'are you really a judge?'" said Sears.

She's helped shape society's perceptions as well as its laws. She also hopes to help shape Georgia's future as she advises young people who will eventually lead the state.

"These students are my children's age and they're facing the challenges of their generation and it's good to come and share with them how we were able to master our challenges and maybe help them get along their way," said Sears.

Her advise? To study hard and look at society with an open mind then devote yourself passionately to making it better.
(WTOC 11 17 April 2009).

I am not a law professor. But from where I sit as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, a family law that fails to encourage marriage ignores the fact that marriage has long been associated with an impressively broad array of positive outcomes for children and adults alike. Experts who contend that we need to move "beyond marriage" say they are only responding to the facts. But here is one major fact: High rates of family fragmentation hurt children. (Washington Post 30 October 2006)

KATHLEEN M. SULLIVAN

Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and Former Dean at the Stanford Law School.

Education: BA, Cornell University, 1976; BA, University of Oxford, 1978; Marshall scholar, 1976-1978; JD, Harvard Law School, 1981.

Some of Sullivan’s “Key Works”:
~ Kathleen M. Sullivan, Public Values in and Era of Privatization--The New Religion and the Constitution, ~ Kathleen M. Sullivan, Political Money and Freedom of Speech, 30 University of California, Davis Law Review 663-90 (1997).
~ Kathleen M. Sullivan, Free Speech and Unfree Markets, 42 University of California, Los Angeles Law Review 949-65 (1995).
~ Kathleen M. Sullivan, The Supreme Court, 1991 Term -- Forward: The Justices of Rules and Standards, 106 Harvard Law Review 22-123 (1992).
(Stanford Law School)

Ms. Sullivan has argued five cases before the United States Supreme Court. (Quinn Emanuel Trial Lawyers)

From Sullivan’s article, “The Good that Lawyers Do.” Journal of Law and Policy 4 (2000): 7-22:

Lawyers’ distributive obligations in reciprocity for professional autonomy should not be thrown out with the bath water of eliminating those restrictions on practice that decrease allocative inefficiency. Lawyers have preserved a large piece of professional autonomy by professing to ensure equal access to justice. This obligation is chiseled in marble above the nine seats and the crimson curtains of the United States Supreme Court. The norms lawyers adopt recite the obligation of equal access to justice. For example, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct state that lawyers should do at least fifty hours of unpaid work every year.

Providing increased access to justice thus is not merely a matter of personal beneficence, goodness, and virtue, but also a matter of professional independence.

A series of states, with the blessing of Congress, said “we will give you welfare when you move to our state, but when you become a new resident you can only get as much welfare as you got in your previous state.” In other words, if a person comes from Mississippi and only received $370 in Mississippi, then for the person’s first year in California she will only receive $370
even though long-time Californians receive $750. A class of indigent women sought to travel to California and take advantage of full Californian welfare benefits. When I became involved in this litigation, along with a team of lawyers from both legal services organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, we asked what we could do to defend this class, given the huge paradigm shifts since the late 1970s and the huge loss of public support for welfare. It did not seem likely that the current Supreme Court would adopt Justice Brennan’s majestic phrasing about the necessities of life. We determined that the current Court does care deeply, however, about a different federal constitutional principle that could be made to serve these clients: specifically, the structure of federalism and the importance of national citizenship in our structure of federalism. Accordingly, we argued that, ever since the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause overruled Dred Scott and ended slavery, states may no longer maintain two classes of citizens. In other words, one is not a new Californian or an old Californian, but rather simply a Californian. We argued that California could decide whether national citizens who entered its borders truly resided in California or whether they were faking residence, but otherwise must treat all bona fide state residents alike.

In a 1999 decision Saenz v. Roe, our argument finally prevailed,26 as the Court ruled, seven to two, that two-tier welfare residency schemes violate the Citizenship clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment. As a result, we took a class of people who were unlikely to prevail under the old paradigm about the necessities of life, and persuaded the Supreme Court that they should prevail under the structural paradigm of federalism. The power of argument, ideas, and ideals that transcended a political paradigm shift enabled this surprising victory. This story conveys that law is a distinctive social practice, not reducible to ordinary politics.

(L - Kagan)

Elena Kagan

Born: April 28, 1960

Education: Princeton University A.B. 1981, History; Worcester College, Oxford M. Phil. 1983; Harvard Law School J.D. 1986.

“Politically, Kagan is considered liberal by most observers. As dean of Harvard Law School, she prohibited the military from recruiting on campus because of the military’s position on homosexuality“ (rightpundits.com). She believes “the ‘don't ask; don't tell’ policy adopted by a Democrat Congress and President Clinton is ‘a profound wrong -- a moral injustice of the first order," she argued that it violates the First Amendment for the United States to withhold funds from colleges that ban the military from recruiting on campus. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this view (Huffington Post 1 May 2009).

Solicitor General (confirmed on 19 March 2009). During her confirmation “That's why Specter was out of line during Judiciary Committee hearings in barraging Kagan with questions about her views on matters including the death penalty, eminent domain and the use by U.S. courts of foreign law” (L.A. Times 26 March 2009).

Clinton White House: 1995-1996 associate counsel to the President; 1997-1999 deputy assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; 1997-1999 deputy director Domestic Policy Council.

Served as a judicial clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Dean Kagan briefly served as a staff member for Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign. During the summer of 1993 she served as Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee to work on the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In her 1993 University of Chicago Law Review piece, she wrote that proposed regulations on hate speech and pornography failed to adhere to the fundamental First Amendment principle of viewpoint neutrality — that the government cannot favor certain private speakers or viewpoints over others.

Kagan criticizes the secondary-effects doctrine under which government officials have labeled restrictions on sexually oriented expression as content-neutral rather than content-based. In First Amendment law, content-neutral laws are subject to a lower level of judicial review (called intermediate scrutiny) than content-based laws, which are subject to strict scrutiny.
(First Amendment Center 8 January 2009)

(Letter in Support of Kagan's nomination to position of Solicitor General from Iraq War Veterans and Harvard Law School Students. US Senate Committee on the Judiciary/Nominations)