President Bush’s selection of D.C. appellate judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court is a solid one and should not lead to much of a confirmation fight. As noted in this post from earlier this year, Judge Roberts was my favorite candidate for one of the Supreme Court openings, a superb thinker and writer while on the D.C. Court of Appeals.
Stuart Buck passes along notes that, before Judge Roberts took the bench, Justice Scalia told one of Stuart’s friends that he and several other Supreme Court Justices thought that Roberts was the best Supreme Court litigator in the country. The reason? Because he never became flustered during questioning and was always able to answer any question calmly while skillfully weaving in the substantive points that he wanted to make in the first place. As usual, the SCOTUS Blog has a fine compendium of resources on the Roberts nomination, including this post that reviews some of his decisions while on the D.C. Court of Appeals.
My sense is that the nomination of Judge Roberts means that there is a good chance that President Bush intends to nominate a woman to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist when he retires as expected in the near future. Hopefully, Houstonian and Fifth Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones will be in the running for that nomination.