Thank God!. Sure, Obama will replace him with another liberal, but Souter has been a travishamockery of a Judge to quote that Bud Light ad of a while back. Bush 41 really screwed the pooch there. If he had gotten that pick right, Roe v Wade would have been gone for the last 20 years. Affirmative Action would have been history. All those gitmo decisions would have been the other way. I could go on.
And what gratitude did Souter show Bush 41 or the Bush family? None. He deliberately held out until Bush was gone and then got out of town as fast as he could. If McCain had won he’d have stayed until 2013.
This by the way was the number one reason to vote for McCain. Not that with only 40 Republicans we’d have gotten another Roberts or Alito, but we’d have gotten another Kennedy instead of another Ginsburg which is what we’ll end up with.
Thankfully this doesn’t change the balance of the Court at all.
I think Stevens holds out another year or two to break Holmes’ olderst justice records and Bill Douglas’ longest tenure record then he bails. Ginsburg is in supposedly frail health.
The key is to hope nothing happens to Scalia or Kennedy. They both turn 73 this year and if one of them goes, we are completely finished on the Court for the next 30 years.
America is on such thin ice its crazy.
They should be fine for another 15, heck maybe 20 years providing they take good care of themselves and a little luck. (knock on wood)
This seems to have been in the works for longer than you think, but it is pretty coincidental that he's announce it two days after the Republicans lost the filibuster.