>Possible Nominees to the Supreme Court
>
>Samuel A. Alito, Jr., 55, is a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of
>Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
>
> Nominated by President George H. W. Bush to the court in 1990,
>Alito was educated at Princeton University and Yale Law School. His
>work experience includes stints as assistant to the Solicitor
>General and deputy assistant to the Attorney General during the
>Reagan Administration, and as U.S. Attorney for the District of New
>Jersey.
>
> Alito has voted to uphold regulations on abortion, notably as the
>lone dissenter in a 1991 case in which the 3rd Circuit struck down a
>Pennsylvania law's requirement that women tell their husbands before
>having an abortion. The three-judge panel preserved most elements of
>the abortion control law, including a 24-hour waiting period and a
>requirement that minors notify their parents. But Alito argued in
>his dissent that the spousal notification provision did not impose
>an "undue burden" and also should have been upheld.
>
> In other rulings, Alito wrote for the majority in 1997 in finding
>that Jersey City officials did not violate the Constitution with a
>holiday display that included a creche, a menorah and secular
>symbols of the Christmas season. In 1999, he and his colleagues
>found that a Newark policy that allowed medical, but not religious,
>exemptions to a ban on police officers having beards violated the
>First Amendment.
>
> -- Christopher Lee
>
> Sen. John Cornyn, 53, is the junior senator from Texas, elected in 2002.
>
> Since his election, Cornyn -- nicknamed "Johnny Boy" by Bush -- has
>been an outspoken proponent of the president's administration and
>the conservative branch of the GOP. But prior to arriving in
>Washington, Cornyn's reputation as Texas Attorney General and as a
>Texas Supreme Court justice was that of a moderate Republican.
>
> His seven-year tenure on the court was characterized by decisions
>favoring business and limiting government control. But he also wrote
>the majority decision in 1995 upholding Texas' so-called Robin Hood
>school finance law in which wealthier school districts share money
>with poorer ones, a plan that Republicans have been trying to
>abolish since.
>
> During his four years as state attorney general, Cornyn angered
>some local Republicans for trying, unsuccessfully, to modify a
>ruling by a previous attorney general that eliminated affirmation
>action programs at Texas colleges. He sued auto and home insurance
>firms for underpaying claims and for deceptive trade practices and
>prosecuted unscrupulous nursing home operators, as well as appeared
>before the U. S. Supreme Court to defend a small Texas school
>district that broadcast student-led prayer before football games.
>The court ruled against the school-sponsored practice.
>
> In the Senate, Cornyn, 53, has led efforts to defend Bush's
>judicial nominees and to fight filibusters of nominees, writing
>National Review articles that label opponents as "liberal special
>interest groups" engaged in "vicious politics." He spearheaded the
>push to adopt constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and
>flag-burning and favors school vouchers, prayer in public schools,
>extending the Bush-initiated tax cuts beyond 2010 and privatizing
>Social Security. He opposes abortion and partial birth abortions
>except when a woman's life is endangered.
>
> -- Sylvia Moreno
>
> Emilio M. Garza, 57, is a judge for U.S. Court of Appeals for the
>5th Circuit and has been on the short list for a Supreme Court
>nomination before.
>
> Justice Department officials interviewed Garza in 1991, when he was
>among a handful of candidates being considered by President George
>H. W. Bush to succeed Justice Thurgood Marshall. But Garza then had
>only three years of experience on the federal bench and his views on
>many issues were unknown. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas instead.
>
> Garza, who will turn 58 in August, would make history as the first
>Hispanic ever nominated to the high court.
>
> The former Marine captain earned bachelor's and master's degrees
>from the University of Notre Dame and graduated from the University
>of Texas School of Law. He practiced law in his native San Antonio
>for 11 years and served as a state district judge for a year before
>President Reagan nominated him to the U.S. District Court 1988.
>Three years later Bush elevated him to the 5th Circuit.
>
> Since then Garza has developed a reliably conservative judicial
>record that includes criticism of the Roe V. Wade abortion decision
>of 1973. In 1997, Garza sided with the majority in upholding a lower
>court decision that struck down parts of a Louisiana law requiring
>parents to be notified when a minor child seeks an abortion. In his
>concurring opinion, however, he expressed doubts about whether Roe
>v. Wade was well-grounded in the Constitution.
>
> "[I]n the absence of governing constitutional text, I believe that
>ontological issues such as abortion are more properly decided in the
>political and legislative arenas," Garza wrote. ". . . . [I]t is
>unclear to me that the [Supreme] Court itself still believes that
>abortion is a 'fundamental right' under the Fourteenth Amendment. .
>. ."
>
> Garza would be the first Hispanic chief justice.
>
> -Christopher Lee
>
> Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, 49, has less time on the
>bench than the other likely Supreme Court candidates but has one
>crucial advantage: the close friendship of President Bush.
>
> Gonzales grew up as the son of impoverished Mexican immigrants and
>went on to graduate from Harvard University law school. Bush, then
>the governor of Texas, hired him as his general counsel and later
>appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court. Bush brought Gonzales to
>Washington as his White House counsel in 2001.
>
> The Senate narrowly approved Gonzales as attorney general in
>February after he faced sharp criticism from Democrats over the role
>he played in approving controversial detention and antiterrorism
>policies.
>
> Yet legal experts say that the strongest opposition to Gonzales as
>a Supreme Court candidate would likely come from the right, due
>primarily to positions he has taken on issues like abortion and
>affirmative action.
>
> While on the bench in Texas, Gonzales sided with a majority in a
>2000 case allowing an unidentified 17-year-old girl to obtain an
>abortion without notifying her parents, finding that she qualified
>for an exception to that state's parental notification law. In a
>concurring opinion, Gonzales said that to side with dissenters in
>the case would amount to "an unconscionable act of judicial
>activism."
>
> Gonzales also testified at his attorney general confirmation
>hearing earlier this year that he recognized the Roe v. Wade
>decision legalizing abortion as "the law of the land."
>
> Advisors close to the White House have said that Bush likes the
>idea that Gonzales would be the first Hispanic chief justice.
>(Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, a justice in the 1930s, was of Portuguese
>and Jewish descent.)
>
> -- Dan Eggen
>
> J. Michael Luttig, 51, has been a favorite in conservative legal
>circles for decades, going back to his clerkship for then-Judge
>Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in
>1982-83.
>
> A graduate of Washington and Lee University and the University of
>Virginia law school, Luttig also clerked for Chief Justice Warren E.
>Burger in 1983-84, practiced law in the private sector from
>1985-1989, and then served in a variety of Justice Department
>positions during the first Bush administration, where his duties
>included helping current Justices Clarence Thomas and David H.
>Souter win Senate confirmation.
>
> President George H.W. Bush appointed him to the Richmond-based U.S.
>Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 1991, when Luttig was
>just 37 years old. Ever since, he has been spoken of as a likely
>choice for the Supreme Court should a Republican president have a
>chance to name him. His many supporters on the right, including
>ex-law clerks sprinkled throughout the Bush administration, think
>now is Luttig's time.
>
> This has sometimes led him to clash with other members of the 4th
>Circuit, including fellow conservative J. Harvie Wilkinson, also
>thought of as a Supreme Court contender. In 2000, he dissented from
>a ruling by Wilkinson that upheld a Fish and Wildlife Service
>regulation limiting the killing of endangered wolves on private
>land. He also disagreed with Wilkinson in 2003, when he wrote a
>dissenting opinion that supported the Bush administration's position
>that it could designate and detain "enemy combatants" with little
>judicial scrutiny.
>
> In 1998, he upheld Virginia's ban on the procedure known as a
>partial birth abortion -- but agreed to let it be struck down after
>the Supreme Court struck down a similar Nebraska law in 2000.
>
> -- Charles Lane
>
> Michael W. McConnell, 50, has been a judge on the U.S. Court of
>Appeals for the 10th Circuit, based in Denver, since his appointment
>by President Bush in 2002.
>
> Before then, he was mostly a legal academic, having served as a law
>professor at the University of Chicago from 1985-1996 and
>subsequently at the University of Utah.
>
> McConnell's good standing with the legal professoriate helped him
>immeasurably during the confirmation process; more than 300 of his
>fellow professors, including many liberals, endorsed him for the
>bench.
>
> An eclectic thinker who served both as a law clerk for the liberal
>icon Justice William Brennan and as an official in the Reagan
>administration, McConnell has expressed his opinions on a wide range
>of subjects, including a Wall Street Journal op-ed in December 2000
>in which he expressed doubts about the legal reasoning of the
>Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision.
>
> But his outspoken disagreement with Roe v. Wade has earned him the
>condemnation of liberal advocacy groups (though at his confirmation
>hearing he called it "settled law.") Conservatives like his writings
>favoring government "neutrality" toward religion.
>
> As a judge, McConnell has upheld Congress's power to criminalize
>the possession of homemade child pornography; in a case soon to be
>reviewed by the court, he voted to prohibit enforcement of federal
>anti-drug laws against people who consume hallucinogenic tea as part
>of a religious ritual.
>
> -- Charles Lane
>
> John G. Roberts, 50, has long been considered one of the
>Republicans' heavyweights amid the largely Democratic Washington
>legal establishment. Roberts was appointed to the U.S. Court of
>Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2003 by President George W. Bush.
>(He was also nominated by the first President Bush, but never
>received a Senate vote). Previously, he practiced law at D.C.'s
>Hogan & Hartson from 1986-1989 and 1993-2003. Between 1989 and 1993,
>he was the Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the first Bush
>administration, helping formulate the administration's position in
>Supreme Court cases. During the Reagan administration, he served as
>an aide to Attorney General William French Smith from 1981-1982 and
>as a an aide to White House Counsel Fred Fielding from 1982-1986.
>
> With impeccable credentials -- Roberts attended Harvard College and
>Harvard Law School, clerked for Justice William H. Rehnquist on the
>Supreme Court and has argued frequently before the court -- the
>question marks about Roberts have always been ideological. While his
>Republican party loyalties are undoubted, earning him the opposition
>of liberal advocacy groups, he is not a "movement conservative," and
>some on the party's right-wing doubt his commitment to their cause.
>His paper record is thin: as Deputy Solicitor General in 1990, he
>argued in favor of a government regulation that banned
>abortion-related counseling by federally-funded family planning
>programs. A line in his brief noted the Bush administration's belief
>that Roe v. Wade should be overruled.
>
> As a judge on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts voted with two colleagues
>to uphold the arrest and detention of a twelve-year old girl for
>eating french fries on the Metro train, though his opinion noted
>that "[n]o one is very happy about the events that led to this
>litigation." In another case, Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion
>that suggested Congress might lack the power under the
>Constitution's Commerce Clause to regulate the treatment of a
>certain species of wildlife.
>
> -- Charles Lane
>
> Theodore B. Olson, 64, is the former Solicitor General and now an
>attorney in private practice in Washington at the firm Gibson, Dunn
>& Crutcher.
>
> He has been with the firm since 1965 except for two forays into
>government, serving as President Bush's Solicitor General from
>2001-2004 and as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal
>Counsel for three years during President Ronald Reagan's first term.
>
> He argued Bush's case before the Supreme Court that decided the
>outcome of the disputed 2000 presidential election.
>
> His other cases have included representing Cheryl Hopwood, who
>argued that affirmative action in admissions at the University of
>Texas was a violation of the Constitution. In 1996, a federal
>appeals court agreed with Olson and Hopwood that the university's
>policy was unconstitutional. That same year, he represented the
>Virginia Military Institute before the Supreme Court against claims
>that the school's admissions policy discriminated against women and
>lost.
>
> Olson was legal counsel to Reagan during the investigation of the
>Iran-contra affair. And he represented Jonathan Pollard, who was
>convicted of selling government secrets to Israel, in his failed bid
>for a reduction of his life sentence.
>
> While President Bill Clinton was in office, Olson railed against
>the administration in the conservative American Spectator magazine,
>where he was a contributing writer and a member of its board of
>directors.
>
> But his passion threatened his confirmation as solicitor general.
>During hearings, Democrats asked Olson if he played a role in the
>"Arkansas Project," an attempt by American Spectator to uncover
>scandals involving President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary.
>Olson said he did not, but a Spectator staff writer, David Brock,
>told the Judiciary Committee that Olson was directly involved. Olson
>was confirmed, but not until after an inquiry into charges that his
>testimony was untruthful.
>
> --Darryl Fears
>
> Larry D. Thompson, 59, is a senior vice president and general
>counsel for PepsiCo.
>
> He was the deputy Attorney General--the No. 2 person at the Justice
>Department--for much of President Bush's first term.
>
> During his tenure at Justice, he had daily involvement in the war
>on terror and headed the corporate crime task force that pursued
>prosecutions against Enron Corp., Worldcom Inc. and HealthSouth Corp.
>
> He was one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the Bush
>administration and if appointed to the court, would be the third
>African American justice.
>
> Thompson is a longtime acquaintance of Justice Thomas and was a
>member of the legal team that assisted Thomas during his
>confirmation hearings in 1991.
>
> Around the same time, Thompson angered some civil rights groups
>when he wrote that certain black leaders "stressed . . . black
>people as victims" and ignored problems like their "lack of respect
>for the law, kids having children too soon and fathers who were not
>taking their responsibility seriously."
>
> He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, served
>as a U.S. Attorney in Georgia and practiced at the Atlanta firm of
>King & Spalding.
>
> --Darryl Fears
>
> J. Harvie Wilkinson, 61, was appointed to the 4th Circuit by
>President Reagan in 1984.
>
> Before his appointment he was the No. 2 official in the Justice
>Department's Civil Rights Office from 1982-1983.
>
> Unlike most other leading candidates for the court, Wilkinson has
>not practiced law in the private sector; he has more experience in
>journalism and teaching.
>
> From 1978-1982, he was the editorial page editor of the
>Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and from 1973-1978, he was a
>professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he
>received his own law degree before moving on to a clerkship for
>Justice Lewis F. Powell.
>
> His paper trail is, accordingly, immense. He has written not only
>legal opinions, but also books, speeches and journal articles in
>which he sketches a self-consciously moderate conservative
>philosophy. A typical example was a 2003 Virginia Law Review article
>titled "Why Conservative Jurisprudence is Compassionate."
>
> Powell, an old family friend, is a role model and mentor for
>Wilkinson, whose own gentle, courtly manners remind some of the late
>justice's demeanor.
>
> His rulings have included a 1987 opinion striking down a minority
>set-aside program for city contractors in Richmond and a 1996
>opinion upholding the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy for
>homosexual service members.
>
> -- Charles Lane
>
>
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