SOUTER MAKES IT OFFICIAL, OBAMA COMMENTS - AT 4:41 P.M. ET:  Associate Justice David Souter gave formal notification today that he is leaving the Supreme Court in June.  President Obama appeared at the daily White House briefing to comment on the matter.  The New York Times reports:

Promising to nominate a replacement with “a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity,” Mr. Obama, who startled reporters by walking to the lectern for a cameo appearance in the middle of the daily White House press briefing, said that he would look for a candidate for whom the law was not a matter of abstract theory, but a force that affects real people in their daily lives.

COMMENT:  Now that's a nice thought, of course.  We want justices to be sensitive to "real people in their daily lives."  But wait.  Which people?  What kind of lives?  Given the record of this administration on the detainee issue, I fear we may go back to the bad old days of the sixties and seventies, when the rights of criminals outweighed the rights of the innocent, and crime was shrugged off as a "socio-economic problem." 

We await Obama's first nominee.  The terms of Supreme Court justices usually outlast, by many years, the terms of the presidents who appoint them, so the word "legacy" comes into play. 

We also await press coverage.   Will it be detailed and probing?  Or will we be presented with the image of the messiah anointing a disciple?  Which do you think?

May 1, 2009