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By AndrewHyman Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Tom Curry of MSNBC has an interesting article about the possibility of an upcoming vacancy in the Supreme Court. Curry says that the top three contenders to fill such a vacancy are Judges Luttig, McConnell, and Roberts. Of these three, Luttig most probably would be closest to Justices Thomas and Scalia as far as judicial philosophy is concerned, in my opinion.

Curry's MSNBC article also includes this unfortunate quote from Senator Durbin of Illinois:

“If they don’t respect the Griswold decision, as far as I am concerned they should be filibustered," Durbin said.

So here we go again with the filibusters. Griswold v. Connecticut was the 1965 Supreme Court case that said contraceptives are protected by "penumbras, formed by emanations" from the Bill of Rights, and that case set the stage for Roe v. Wade eight years later. I guess a nominee must now believe in penumbras and emanations in order to avoid a filibuster. Apparently, Senator Durbin would filibuster against someone like Justice Potter Stewart, who wrote in 1973 that, “the Connecticut law did not violate any provision of the Bill of Rights....�? (Stewart reached the same result as Griswold but on other dubious grounds).

The Griswold decision was written by William O. Douglas. If Senator Durbin wants to demand a Douglas-clone, or wants to demand a Stewart-clone, then Durbin should run for President and nominate who he wants. But as a Senator, Durbin has no legitimate authority to demand that the President nominate any particular person, or to choose what type of person is nominated. Moreover, if Senator Durbin thinks that any state legislature is inclined to ban contraceptives, then he is out of his mind.

By the way, in case you haven't noticed, the links over at the right-hand-side of our confirmthem home page now include "SCOTUS candidates."