Obama should nominate retired Justice O’Connor to the Supreme Court, profs say
Sandra Day O’Connor in 2013. Joel Shawn / Shutterstock.com
Corrected: President Barack Obama should nominate former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to an op-ed by two political science professors.
O’Connor left the Supreme Court in 2006 to care for her husband, who died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease in 2009. She has continued to hear cases on federal appeals courts. Now she is nearly 86, and her age isn’t a liability, according to the Baltimore Sun article by University of Maryland professor William Blake and Arkansas State University professor Hans Hacker.
O’Connor could serve on the Supreme Court for a year or two, then she could retire to allow the new president to appoint a younger justice, the professors say. Appointing her would keep the Supreme Court fully staffed and would avoid the problem of tie votes, they add.
O’Connor is known for carefully worded, pragmatic opinions that decide cases on narrow legal grounds, the professors say. “And, if an O’Connor appointment wins over public support, the eventual presidential nominees on either side will need to address the question of whether a doctrinaire liberal or conservative judicial philosophy truly is preferable to a pragmatic jurisprudence,” their op-ed asserts.
An O’Connor nomination would be “a shrewd political move,” Blake and Hacker say.
“Republican leaders routinely tout President Reagan as an icon; a vote against confirming Justice O’Connor would be an admission that the patron saint of the modern Republican Party wasn’t infallible,” they write. “Senate Republicans couldn’t question Justice O’Connor’s credentials. And they would be unable to cast her appointment as one that would shape the court for the next generation.”
Speaking with Fox News affiliate KSAZ on Wednesday, O’Connor disagreed with the idea that Obama should decline to name a nominee to allow the next president to do it, the Huffington Post reports.
“I think we need somebody there to do the job now and let’s get on with it,” she said.
Hat tip to How Appealing.
Second paragraph corrected on Feb. 22 to say that O’Connor is “nearly 86” rather than 86.
