Of all the Republicans who've thus far declared their intention to seek the presidency in 2008, Rudy Giuliani strikes me as the one that liberals could most stomach. He's got the whole 9/11 leadership thing going on; he's sort of an old-fashioned Republican in the sense that he's comfortable with his own infidelities and isn't obsessed with what other people do in the privacy of their own homes or doctor's offices. But Giuliani's legal philosophy actually says a lot more about what kind of president he would be than whether he supports gay marriage, and in this area, he doesn't need to do much to boost his conservative bona fides.
Giuliani has already given a couple of speeches championing limits on class actions. And ABC's Jan Crawford Greenberg noted earlier this month that Hiz Honor has tapped former Bush solicitor general Ted Olson, a longtime friend from the Reagan administration, to head his "judicial advisory council." If you recall, Olson argued Bush v. Gore before the U.S. Supreme Court and is revered in conservative legal circles. Greenberg asked Olson what sort of judges Giuliani would likely appoint to the high court Olson suggested that Giuliani would be enthusiastic about California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, whom Bush has tried to appoint to the D.C. Circuit.
[Correction: Bush did finally succeed in getting Brown appointed to the D.C. Circuit. Sorry for the mistake in my original post.]
Even if you ignore some of her anti-government rantings from the bench, it's worth noting that a minority of evaluators from the ABA rated Brown "not qualified" to serve on the D.C. Circuit. The California Judicial Commission gave her a "not qualified" rating when she was nominated for California's high court a decade ago, partly because of her unorthodox view of the Constitution, but also because she was too slow producing opinions. Maybe with the skimpy case load at the U.S. Supreme Court these days, a plodding opinion-writing record isn't necessarily a disqualifier for service. But still, the fact that Giuliani would choose ideology over competency in a judge isn't exactly a selling point on his candidacy in my book.