They’ve essentially wrapped up their work narrowing a list of replacements and are just waiting quietly for a vacancy.

The last elections revealed sharp political divisions in the American political landscape, … Yet many student opinions about the First Amendment and freedom of the press tend to stay remarkably consistent across these otherwise widely...

The issue has never been most qualified, the issue is qualified.

There was one person who kind of stood up and was willing to test the standard and it didn’t work out well for him. And thus the lesson was learned for all future nominees, and...

No one could possibly have thought in 1956 that William Brennan was on the top 100 list of people to become a justice of the Supreme Court,

This is one of the few ways even a weak president can make his mark especially when his party controls the Senate.

He was one of the great failures in Supreme Court history, … He was overwhelmed by the job and quit after just five years.

Circulating names on a short list creates a pre-vetting process, so they can at least know what to expect,

They are saving their ammunition, saving their energy, saving their resources for what could be the next Armageddon. They can’t go all-out over and over.

[In the midst of an undeclared war on terrorism, the courts could ultimately establish new legal precedent.] There are issues we have never dealt with before, … And some of it has to be made...

He was able, over time, to gather colleagues together cordially, manage tension, build a majority and turn them over to his point of view,

He took the fight out of the opposition.

On issues involving the War on Terrorism, there is a lot of reason to believe Gonzales will be more conservative than Rehnquist. He is more likely to confer broad powers to the executive branch,

On the issues there is no reason to think Gonzales is less conservative than Rehnquist except perhaps on the issue of whether Roe should be overturned, … But that isn’t to say Gonzales wouldn’t vote...

What history dictates is even relatively weak presidents have often gone for home runs with nominees,

Law enforcement is telling the courts that in a post 9/11 world, the rules have changed, … Pursuit of Justices.

There are issues we have never dealt with before,

They want more latitude to set up roadblocks, things like that, to prevent terrorism and other violent crimes. And it’s unclear how the Supreme Court will respond to that kind of argument.

The Bush administration has done a great job in reviewing the candidates, going through their opinions, backgrounds, and speeches,

This stability has allowed the Court to really get comfortable with themselves,

When the history of the Rehnquist court is written, it will be about a justice who moved the court in a conservative direction, but in a way that did not tear the court apart.

The impact is that it really gives attorneys an avenue to raise new types of challenges to federal statutes that wouldn’t have been considered 15-20 years ago.

Are you a Scalia Catholic, a Brennan Catholic or a Kennedy Catholic?