Justice In The Balance
Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down unexpectedly from the Supreme Court, closing out a career as the first female justice and the anchor of a shaky majority for abortion rights. President George W. Bush pledged to name a successor quickly as a costly confirmation battle took shape.
O'Connor's decision to retire Friday created the first vacancy at the high court in 11 years, and marked the departure of the justice who had become the majority maker in a stream of 5-4 cases covering abortion, the death penalty and more over a quarter-century.
Bush, under pressure from some conservatives to name an outright foe of abortion, said he would appoint a successor who "will faithfully interpret the Constitution and laws of our country."
And as White House Correspondent Bill Plante reports, with the potential of a bitter battle to replace the Supreme Court's key swing vote, the president laid down his marker -- a demand that there be no filibuster by Democrats.
"The nation also deserves a dignified process of confirmation in the United States Senate," he added.
Mr. Bush wants Senate confirmation before the new court term begins in October -- but his staff says he won't nominate a new justice until after he returns from Europe next Friday, Plante reports.
Democrats said it was up to Bush to avoid a lengthy confirmation battle. "Above all, Justice O'Connor has been a voice of reason and moderation on the court," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "It is vital that she be replaced by someone like her."
O'Connor, 75 and a breast cancer survivor, kept her retirement a surprise even from her son, and it was not until Friday morning that she dispatched her letter, hand-delivered to the president.
It seemed to catch Bush's team off guard. The president and his staff had long been anticipating a retirement letter from Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 80 and ailing with thyroid cancer.
The Rehnquist guessing game continued. "If we haven't heard from him by now, the chances are you won't hear from him for some time," predicted Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee that will hold hearings on Bush's candidate. The last time there were two simultaneous vacancies at the court was 1971; Rehnquist was picked for one of them.
Whatever the chief justice's plans, the short list of contenders, exclusively male, may have to be expanded in view of O'Connor's retirement, according to one White House official.
Plante reports the White House has been preparing for this day for years and has a short list of well-researched names for him to consider, including:
Among female candidates to replace O'Connor, conservatives are suggesting Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American, and Priscilla Owen, both on the grounds that it'd be hard to reject either since both were just confirmed to the appellate court, reports Plante.
O'Connor's decision capped a pioneer's career. President Ronald Reagan broke nearly 200 years of tradition in 1981 when he named her — a top-ranked graduate of Stanford law school — as the first woman to wear the robes of a justice.
"As the first woman to be appointed to this court, Sandra Day O'Connor was thrust into the spotlight as no new justice has ever been," Justice Antonin Scalia said in a written statement issued by the court.
Aware by her own account of the historical burden, she evolved into a moderate conservative, but more importantly, the consistent center of a fractured court.
In her first term, she cast the deciding vote and wrote a 5-4 ruling that said a Mississippi all-women college must allow a male student to study nursing.
It was the first of many such cases.
She voted with the majority on three significant 5-4 cases in recent years: the disputed 2000 presidential election that went to Bush, and a ruling last year that said the war on terrorism did not give the government a blank check to hold terror suspects in legal limbo.
Nowhere was her legal thinking more carefully scrutinized than when it came to abortion, an issue that divides the court as it does the country.
O'Connor balked at letting states outlaw most abortions, refusing in 1989 to join four other justices who were ready to reverse the landmark 1973 decision that said women have a constitutional right to abortion.
In 1992, she helped forge a five-justice majority that reaffirmed the core holding of the 1973 ruling. Then, in 2000, she provided the fifth and decisive vote that struck down a Nebraska law that was aimed at banning a procedure critics call "partial-birth abortions."
In her opinion, she wrote that to be constitutional, a ban must include "an exception to preserve the life and health of the mother."
Last week, she sided with a 5-4 majority in a ruling that threw out the sentence of a death row inmate and warned state courts that shoddy legal defense representation wouldn't be tolerated.
In a one-sentence written statement on Friday, O'Connor cited her age and said she "needs to spend time" with her family.
Her official resignation letter was brief.
"It has been a great privilege indeed to have served as a member of the court for 24 terms," the 75-year-old justice wrote to Bush. "I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure."
"For an old ranching girl, you turned out pretty good," Bush told her in a private call not long after receiving her letter, an aide said.
Then, in the Rose Garden outside the Oval Office, he praised her as "a discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of complete integrity."
Partisans on both sides have been preparing for a vacancy for months. Given her opinions on abortion, O'Connor's decision to step down raised the stakes for partisans on both sides of the issue.
Senate aides of both parties held strategy meetings during the day.
CBS News Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen said O'Connor's departure is "far more significant" than the conservative Rehnquist's would have been.
"She was the pivotal 'swing' vote on many of the most contentious issues of the day, from affirmative action to abortion rights, from campaign-finance reform to federal disability access law, from gay rights to the death penalty," said Cohen.