Ed Brayton, of
Dispatches from the Culture Wars, says a source whom he trusts has information that William Rehnquist will be stepping down as chief justice this month. (The
current business of the Court wraps up June 23, with loose ends due to be tied up in September before the start of the new term on the first Monday in October.)
Brayton's source also has a horse in the running to replace Rehnquist--and it is neither Thomas nor Scalia. Thomas has allegedly told the Bush administration that he's not interested in going through another high-tech lynching confirmation fight. Scalia is apparently out of the running because he's perceived as being too divisive a figure on the Court to be effective as chief justice. I agree with Brayton that both scenarios are plausible, though I also feel a certain amount of sympathy for the sentiments expressed by some of the commenters on his post ("since when has Bush demonstrated any tendencies toward either the rational or the plausible?").
Brayton and his source are both in agreement that the likely nominee to replace Rehnquist is a certain
Michael McConnell, since January 2003 a justice of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. McConnell taught at the S. J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah from 1997 until his appointment to the bench. He got his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught from 1985-1997. Prior to taking up teaching, McConnell was an assistant to the Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice, assistant general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget, and he clerked for Associate Justice William Brennan of the Supreme Court, among other appointments. The biography I've linked to says that McConnell is "among the country's most distinguished scholars in the fields of constitutional law and theory, with a specialty in the religion clauses of the First Amendment."
According to Brayton:
He has broad support from legal scholars, including many prominent liberals, and he has proven to be a consistent conservative rather than a partisan one (for example, he publicly opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton and spoke out strongly against the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision). Given the other potential choices, McConnell is about as good as liberals or libertarians could expect to get as a nominee given the current configuration.
It's the first I've heard of the man, or the news that Rehnquist might actually be stepping down. This development will bear watching, and I'm thinking that a few Google and/or Lexis/Nexis searches might be in order...
Cross-posted from Musing's musings.