HIS KIND OF JUSTICE - AT 7:19 A.M. ET:  Who will Barack Obama pick as his first Supreme Court choice?  Well, we don't have the name, but superb legal journalist Stuart Taylor Jr. has done his research - rare among today's journalists - and come up with some hints as to the kind of person the president might prefer.  This is speculation, but fun:

In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama spoke favorably of "moderate nominees who can garner some measure of bipartisan support." While that can be seen as political positioning, Obama also cautioned against bold judicial social engineering in a 2001 radio interview in which he spoke approvingly of "redistribution of wealth."

John McCain's presidential campaign jumped on that phrase, suggesting that Obama had endorsed judicial redistribution of wealth. This was false. In fact, Obama's complaint was that "the civil-rights movement became so court-focused" as to neglect "political and organizing activities." He added a note of caution against seeing the Warren Court's extraordinarily bold attack on an entrenched system of racial oppression as a precedent for a judge-led war on poverty.

And...

Obama also suggested then that "unelected judiciaries making laws in what is supposed to be a democracy" undermined the legitimacy of their decisions. Former colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught, have described the president as skeptical of the courts' ability to improve on the political process in resolving big public policy issues.

COMMENT:  Not bad.  We can hope.

May 8, 2009