Justice Souter to Retire from the Supreme Court

Here are articles from MSNBC and NPR. The MSNBC articles lists some possible replacement picks and the NPR article notes that most Supreme Court watchers expect President Obama to select a woman to replace Souter.

Ed Whelan provides his initial thoughts at Bench Memos.

Indeed, in coming years, Souter’s replacement may well provide the fifth vote for:

— the imposition of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage;

— stripping “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance and completely secularizing the public square;

— the continued abolition of the death penalty on the installment plan;

— selectively importing into the Court’s interpretation of the American Constitution the favored policies of Europe’s leftist elites;

— further judicial micromanagement of the government’s war powers; and

— the invention of a constitutional right to human cloning.

American citizens have various policy positions on all these issues, but everyone ought to agree that they are to be addressed and decided through the processes of representative government, not by judicial usurpation. And President Obama, who often talks a moderate game, should be made to pay a high price for appointing a liberal judicial activist who will do his dirty work for him.