Justice and justices

The Wall St. Journal's "Evening Wrap" on the O'Connor retirement:

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement, setting up a political battle royale for the high court's heart that could derail Senate business for much of the rest of the year.

Justice O'Connor, the first woman ever to serve on the high court, retired after 24 terms, during which she was a key swing vote in several closely divided decisions. Nominated by President Reagan, Justice O'Connor most often joined court majorities in decisions that pleased conservatives, including her vote to stop the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election. But she also took positions that angered those same conservatives, most notably her 1992 vote to uphold the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and other votes that curbed the death penalty and upheld affirmative action. Given her role, her replacement could change the court's ideological bent for decades to come. "With all due respect to the chief justice, she's been the most important justice on the court for the past 20 years," said Bradley Joondeph, law professor at Santa Clara University and a former clerk for Justice O' Connor.

President Bush now must nominate her successor, and he eventually must also propose a replacement for ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whose retirement is expected to come soon. Mr. Bush's conservative base, already fuming about recent judicial decisions on hot-button issues and bitterly disappointed with the record of Republican-appointed Justices David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, will want red-meat conservatives. Mr. Bush might also want to replace Justice O'Connor with another woman, and he almost certainly feels an urge to nominate the court's first Hispanic justice.

The Senate must confirm his choices, and a tough fight there could obliterate a tenuous truce between the parties and trigger the "nuclear option," in which Republicans eliminate Democrats' right to filibuster nominees, and Democrats in turn basically shut down the Senate. Even without going nuclear, the Senate will be too busy to act on Social Security, taxes or other pet projects until at least the fall. But Mr. Bush will likely push a confrontation anyway. "If the Democrats try to ferociously block a Bush pick, it would play right into Karl Rove's strategy of making the 2006 election largely about obstructionism," said Greg Valliere, political analyst at Stanford Washington Research Group. "I would be surprised if he picks a moderate."