Academic

"Will Sonia Sotomayor thank Jeffrey Rosen in her nomination acceptance speech?"

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

The inimitable David Lat wonders. She won't do that, of course, but his point is well taken. Rosen's "case against" Sotomayer was so lame that it may have strengthened her as a candidate. Is that the best you can do?, the Obama team probably wondered. Confirmation will be a cinch.

And it should be a cinch, unless the Senate Republicans embarrass themselves, a feat not without precedent.

By the way, why wasn't Sotomayer everyone's obvious speculation as soon as President Obama made that "ivory tower" comment last week right after interviewing Diane Wood. I suppose we all thought that comment eliminated Pam Karlan and Kathleen Sullivan, but was it also a rejection of Wood? And perhaps Kagen? Or do those two have "a little bit of a common touch" and "a practical sense of how the world works," so they are still eligible for the next opening?

UPDATE: Tom Goldstein with spot on analysis. But why does he suggest that the next nominee will be a white male? This is my second comment in one post on the next nominee, and it's probably too early for that. But it seems to me that one of the side effects of this initial nomination process was the identification of a number of outstanding women candidates for the High Court. There is no reason President Obama has to stop at two.

UPDATE: "Six (!) Catholics on the Court?" That's really quite astonishing.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on May 26, 2009 (boomark / email).