Douglass K. Daniel
Senators: Look beyond the bench for a new justice
WASHINGTON — Democratic and Republican senators said Sunday they hope President Barack Obama looks beyond the federal bench as he considers a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
Obama said last week he would be looking at potential nominees who have empathy for ordinary Americans. The suggestion that the next justice might be inclined to consider more than the law raised concerns among conservatives that an “activist judge” would be selected.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, he chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which holds hearings on Supreme Court nominees, said he would like to see more women and minorities on the court as well as people with different backgrounds.
“I would like to see more people from outside the judicial monastery, somebody who’s had some real-life experience, not just as a judge,” Leahy, D-Vt., said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Judiciary Committee member who last week switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party, said Obama should consider a statesman or stateswoman who has not served on a federal appeals court, as have many justices. He also said that women and minorities are underrepresented on the Supreme Court.
“It would be good to get people who know something besides wearing a black robe,” Specter said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Noting that Obama said the next justice should be a person with empathy, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, asked: “What does that mean? Usually that’s a code word for an activist judge … who’s going to be partisan on the bench.”
Hatch, a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he expects Obama’s nominee to support abortion rights and to be more liberal.
“I’m hoping that he’ll pick somebody of great dimension,” Hatch told ABC.
Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama said that if Obama “will appoint a pragmatist, someone who is not an ideologue, that someone is not just going to light all the light bulbs in America on the left, I think that would be good for the country. He is very smart. He is very careful. I hope he is going to be careful in this appointment.”
Shelby spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
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