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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (419455)	6/27/2003 2:15:18 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

John H. Fund The California jurist who may replace Justice O'Connor newsandopinion.com \| Only a handful of people know if a Supreme Court vacancy will be announced later today. The guessing in Washington is that Chief Justice William Rehnquist is now less likely to retire, given the White House's strongly expressed view that it doesn't want a vacancy. But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor marches to her own drummer, and recent events have led several court observers to speculate she may step down this week. Justice O'Connor has previously expressed a desire to return to Arizona with her husband, who is in poor health. While she has said she has no plans to retire, she has clearly hedged in answering such questions. A few weeks ago she published a book of memoirs that could be seen as a swan song for her judicial career. On Monday the court released a landmark opinion she wrote upholding the racial diversity as a "compelling state interest" that justifies some use of racial preferences in college admissions. What better time to leave the bench then when basking in the praise of the Washington establishment? A likely candidate to replace Justice O'Connor would be Alberto Gonzales, the 47-year-old White House counsel. President Bush has genuine affection for Mr. Gonzales, whom he appointed in 1999 to the Texas Supreme Court, where Mr. Gonzales gave few signals as to his underlying judicial philosophy. Mr. Bush prizes Mr. Gonzales's loyalty, and appointing the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court could help win votes in a crucial bloc. But the bland Mr. Gonzales has many skeptics in the conservative movement. They recall that in 1990, Mr. Bush's father appointed a largely unknown David Souter to the Supreme Court. John Sununu, the elder Mr. Bush's White House chief of staff, assured conservatives Justice Souter would be a "home run." He turned out instead to be one of the most liberal justices on the court. Many fear Mr. Gonzales is another Souter, and with the court divided 5-4 on racial preferences and many other crucial issues, the stakes are high with any nominee. If conservative skepticism about Mr. Gonzales prompts Mr. Bush to turn elsewhere, he has several choices. Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson and J. Michael Luttig of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have excellent résumés and strong conservative records. Emilio Garza and Edith Jones, both judges on the Fifth Circuit, have strong champions within the conservative Federalist Society. But my view is that should Mr. Gonzales not be the nominee for any Supreme Court vacancy, the frontrunner would be Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court. Justice Brown, the daughter of a Alabama sharecropper, is a respected jurist with a compelling life story. Born in 1949, she arrived in California as a child and worked her way through college at Cal State Sacramento and law school at UCLA. She went to work in the state attorney general's office, and in 1991 Gov. Pete Wilson tapped her as his legal-affairs adviser. In 1994 Mr. Wilson appointed her to a state appeals court; two years later he elevated her to the state's highest court. While on the court she has not shied away from controversy. She has said some of her colleagues have "an overactive lawmaking gland" that compels them to second-guess legislators. A clear expression of her frustration with judicial activists came in 1997, when she wrote a dissent in a case where the court majority struck down a state law stipulating that minors had to obtain parental consent for an abortion. "This case is an excellent example of the folly of courts in their role of philosopher kings," she concluded. Her most controversial legal writing will surely be her opinion in a 2000 case that struck down a minority contracting program in San Jose. She found that it ran afoul of Proposition 209, the 1996 state initiative approved that abolished racial preferences by state and local governments. Justice Brown described preferences as an "entitlement based on group representation" and said they have had pernicious effects on society. Her opinion led some liberals to tag her as "a female Clarence Thomas." But she also has a civil-libertarian streak. Last year the California Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of a black man who had been stopped while riding his bicycle the wrong way on a one-way street. Police searched him and found methamphetamine, and he was sentenced to nearly three years in prison. Justice Brown was a lone dissenter from that opinion, arguing that the circumstances of the arrest could be seen as racial profiling. Douglas Kmiec, a former Reagan administration official who is now dean of the law school at Washington's Catholic University, is a close friend of Justice Brown. He believes that she has both the intellectual gifts and the grit to win a bruising confirmation battle and make a lasting impression on the Supreme Court. He also believes that her Christian faith will help her connect with millions of ordinary Americans. Last month, Justice Brown gave the commencement address to Mr. Kmiec's graduating law students. She chastised philosophers for trying to shape society "as if G-d did not exist" and frequently made reference to religious and patriotic themes. Janice Rogers Brown sounds like the kind of nominee that a lot of Americans could come to like and admire. But she also is someone who may stir up a whirlwind of opposition from liberal senators. From what I know of her, senators who tried such strong-arm tactics would come to regret it. Says California businessman Ward Connerly, who led the campaign for Proposition 209: "No one who knows her doesn't believe she would come out on top and leave her critics in the dust."