Senate Republicans will have a chance this week to directly confront President Obama on his vision for reshaping the nation’s courts.
The president is scheduled to meet Wednesday with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to discuss who should fill the seat of Justice John Paul Stevens, who has announced his plans to retire at the end of the Supreme Court’s current term. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will also attend the meeting.
Republicans have threatened to filibuster any nominee who they view as a “judicial activist.” And some Democrats are offering their own advice to Obama, arguing that the president should tap a nominee who is not currently in the judiciary because every member of the current court was once a federal appeals court judge. Leahy has emphasized the importance of going outside “the judicial monastery.”
Former president Bill Clinton said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that “some of the best justices in the Supreme Court in history have been non-judges.”
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