Looking for the Next Liberal Lion

For the last 93 years, only three men have occupied a particular seat on the Supreme Court: Kentuckian Louis D. Brandeis, William O. Douglas of blessed memory, and current senior Justice John Paul Stevens.

When Gerald Ford nominated Stevens in 1975, he was considered a poor replacement for Douglas, the Liberal Lion. But after the court turned sharply wingnut freakazoid in the '90s, Stevens began to live up to the liberal legacy of the seat he occupied.

Now, two years short of the longevity record set by his predecessor, court-watchers see signs that this will be Stevens' last year on the court.

Whether Stevens retires in 2010 or not, President Obama better start searching now for a worthy successor.

Because no one short of another Brandeis, another Douglas, another Stevens will do.

Steve M. has an idea.

IN A JUST WORLD, THIS GUY WOULD BE ON THE SUPREME COURT

Er, President Obama? Hello?

... Nahhh, you'd never have the cojones to pick someone like this (and chances are you'd never be able to get him confirmed):

...Every week, the nation's mightiest banks come to his court seeking to take the homes of New Yorkers who cannot pay their mortgages. And nearly as often, the judge says, they file foreclosure papers speckled with errors.

He plucks out one motion and leafs through: a Deutsche Bank representative signed an affidavit claiming to be the vice president of two different banks. His office was in Kansas City, Mo., but the signature was notarized in Texas. And the bank did not even own the mortgage when it began to foreclose on the homeowner.

The judge's lips pucker as if he had inhaled a pickle; he rejected this one.

"I'm a little guy in Brooklyn who doesn't belong to their country clubs, what can I tell you?" he says, adding a shrug for punctuation. "I won’t accept their comedy of errors."

The judge, Arthur M. Schack, 64, ... has tossed out 46 of the 102 foreclosure motions that have come before him in the last two years. And his often scathing decisions, peppered with allusions to the Croesus-like wealth of bank presidents, have attracted the respectful attention of judges and lawyers from Florida to Ohio to California. At recent judicial conferences in Chicago and Arizona, several panelists praised his rulings as a possible national model....

You know what this guy sounds like? He sounds like a "strict constructionist"

Read the whole thing.

In 1991, George H.W. Bush set the standard for disrespect and farce when he handed Thurgood Marshall's seat to self-hating joke Clarence Thomas.

Obama will top that disaster if he appoints a corporate-defending centrist like Sotomayor to the seat from which Brandeis, Douglas and Stevens defined, expanded and defended American Liberal Democracy.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....