Legal News

Obama Starts High Court Interviewing

By Ashby Jones

Let the interviewing begin!

President Obama has started the process of talking to candidates to replace the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, and on Wednesday, he’ll meet with Senate leaders from both parties to chat it all over, presumably to ask them to confirm his pick in a timely fashion.

Last year, the president interviewed four people. It’s hard to say how many he’ll interview this time, though White House officials have said about 10 candidates are under consideration. Click here for Laura Meckler’s story in the WSJ; here for the AP story.

And who are the 10? Well, no one seems to know precisely. But the AP reports that among the candidates are federal appeals court judges Diane Wood, Merrick Garland and Sidney Thomas, former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow.

And in regard to timing, White House officials said the president expected to announce his choice in the coming weeks, but he’ll talk timing with Senate leaders on Wednesday.

“The president will take the opportunity to talk about timing,” the senior administration official said. He said Obama expected his nominee to be confirmed before senators departed for their August recess, as Justice Sotomayor was, so that the new justice would have time to prepare for the fall session.

Justice Stevens announced his retirement a few weeks earlier in 2010 than Justice Souter did in 2009, giving the Senate additional time to confirm a nominee within this timetable.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the timing would depend on the nominee but in general, a vote by August is “doable and I think we should try to do that.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).