Litigation

Real Change Coming to Supreme Court?

By Peter Hardin

Perhaps the common view that the Supreme Court’s ideological lineup will not change if Elena Kagan is confirmed actually misses the point, a veteran political commentator says.

David Broder suggests in a Washington Post commentary that the high court  might change in unforeseen ways with three female justices on it. His column is headlined, “With another woman, the Supreme Court can’t help but change.”

Broder bases his idea heavily on his experience when female editors and reporters brought gender diversity to the news business. They changed its culture, asked political candidates new questions and “saw the candidates’ lives whole,” he writes. The chauvnistic culture of the campaign press corps changed dramatically too, he adds. Broder concludes:

“I don’t know how having three strong-minded female justices serving simultaneously for the first time will change the world of the Supreme Court. But I will not be surprised if this small society does not change for all its members.”

Meanwhile two different commentaries on Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s expression of support for Kagan at her Senate Judiciary Committee vote this week reflect the chasm that can occur over judicial confirmation politics.

Dana Milbank concluded in the Washington Post that Graham is short but he “towers above his Republican Senate colleagues,” and that Graham’s lone “yes” vote on the committee for Kagan sent a rebuke to “his fellow Republicans who have become so reflexive in their opposition to Obama that they are distorting their constitutional duties.”

In National Review Online, Ed Whelan slams Milbank’s “love letter” that was “beyond embarrassing” and goes on to examine the Federalist Papers and opine, “In sum, Graham utterly fails to make the case that his position of extensive deference to a president?s nomination of a Supreme Court justice is somehow constitutionally compelled.”

In the vote-counting department, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana said he would vote for Kagan’s confirmation, according to an Associated Press article.

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 22, 2010 (boomark / email).