A Liberal Woman Would Help Balance Supreme Court

A liberal woman would help balance Supreme Court

May 14, 2009, 8:23PM

President Obama should appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David Souter. And she should be a liberal.

The high court is top heavy with conservative justices. And there is only one woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on the high bench.

Obama’s choice will say a lot because Supreme Court’s decisions are the ultimate in our national life.

Republicans are itching for a fight over the nominee, despite the fact that they had their way for too many years and worked to tip the court to the right.

This is Obama’s great opportunity to make a statement. Having taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and headed the law review at Harvard University’s law school, Obama is eminently qualified to know the ins and outs of jurisprudence. Obama has already expressed his views about the kind of person he’s looking for. He has expressed the need for a person with “empathy,” which indicates a feeling for the plight of others. He also has reportedly passed the word that he wants someone who will be pragmatic on the bench, whatever that means.

Obama is being pushed by Hispanic groups to name the first Hispanic to the high court. Most prominently mentioned in that category is Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who sits on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University and went to Yale University law school. She grew up poor in public housing in the Bronx, but some of her detractors are calling attention to her reputation for being tough and short tempered.

The new justice undoubtedly will run up against the conservative bloc, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

Many voters think about the makeup of the Supreme Court when they are choosing a president. The justices deal not only with constitutional issues but also with social issues that were unknown to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution more than 200 years ago. The justices read newspapers and are aware of the problems of the day.

If you want to measure the court’s impact, I would recommend that you dig into the history of the Warren court.

One of the most historic and transforming decisions of the court headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren — who held the post from 1953 to 1969 — was Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. In an electrifying ruling, the court held that “separate but equal” public schools were unconstitutional. The Brown decision changed American life by making segregation illegal, a conclusion that eventually affected such public facilities as hotels and restaurants. The social values unleashed by that case made possible the election of the first black president of the United States.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who appointed Warren, was never happy with the Warren court’s liberal decisions. Among them was the Miranda ruling that required police officers to inform arrested people of their rights — even their right to remain silent.

Speaking of disappointed presidents, the first President Bush appointed Souter to the Supreme Court in 1990 and probably regretted that choice after Souter turned out to be a moderate on the court. Souter was even a dissenting justice in the historic 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore that gave the presidential election to Bush’s son, George W. Bush. The court has always been esteemed, whether or not you agree with its rulings — but it lost its halo when it intervened in that case. For many Americans, myself included, the Supreme Court will never be the same after that decision.

Obama is bound to have more opportunities to name other justices in the future. John Paul Stevens, the leader of the liberals, is 89 years old, and Justice Ginsburg is 76 and ailing. Both could retire in coming years. The president has a lot of weighty decisions to make during his tenure, but few are more relevant to Americans than his choice of whom he will nominate to sit on the Supreme Court.

Thomas is a Washington, D.C.-based columnist for the Hearst Newspapers. ()