Obama's Supreme Court pick machinery

by Christi Parsons and Tom Hamburger

The White House already had started gearing up to pick and promote President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, setting machinery in motion well before Justice David Souter called in the early afternoon Friday to tell the president of his pending retirement.

As the administration leadership team on the top-priority project began to emerge, one thing became obvious immediately: the key player will be Obama himself.

The president made clear his intended level of involvement, taking upon himself the most mundane of administrative tasks - with Obama breaking the official news about Souter's resignation by personally interrupting his own press secretary's afternoon press conference.

In tow were his chief of staff and top lawyer, a signal that, whatever direction the vetting and selection process takes, the calls will be coming from the constitutional law professor who now occupies the Oval Office.

"The process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as president," Obama told reporters. "I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book."

Obama praised Souter's approach to judging "with integrity, equanimity and compassion - the hallmark of not just being a good judge, but of being a good person."

In fact, the two men's ideological compatibility may be responsible for the timing of this windfall for Obama. One Souter friend suggests that Obama's election - and the likelihood the Democratic president is about to get a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate -- had something to do with Souter's retirement decision.

Souter could have retired several years ago, said John McCausland, a longtime Souter friend and vicar of Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Souter's hometown of Weare, New Hampshire. "But it looks like he has 60 votes in the Senate and a president . . . well, you can figure out the rest."

Whatever the cause, the White House hopes it can get a new justice confirmed by early October, when the new court term begins. Senate Judiciary Committee staffers expect a nominee after Souter's last day on the court, in June, and a summer hearing process to follow quickly.

That gives Obama's opposition a time to galvanize its response, breathing room it needs in the wake of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's decision this week to switch from the Republican party to the Democratic side. Several senators are likely to vie for his position as ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, leader of the congressional defense.

Meantime, the full war machinery of past nomination battles is whirring into motion. Interest groups on the right and the left churned out dozens of press releases, recommendations and threats on Friday.

The Obama team has been preparing for that battle for months now, setting up a working group on judicial selection right after his election. Obama threw out a few names for them in December.

After inauguration, White House Counsel Greg Craig got to work with a team to vet possible nominees.

As the vacancy began to seem imminent, a fuller team of senior staff members met Thursday to mobilize. On Friday their strategy began to emerge.

Vice President Joe Biden's office will be influential in choosing and promoting the eventual candidate, said one senior administration official. Biden will serve as an "informal and ad hoc" advisor to the president on strategy and other matters, said a White House staffer.

Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff and a former clerk to Justice Byron White, will be involved, the senior official said. Klain was chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary committee during the tumultuous confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas.

But the center of power on the matter is clearly in the Oval Office. The president signaled Friday that he will personally run the process along with Craig and his own senior advisors.

He'll have a fight on his hands. The influential Committee for Justice, supported by conservative and business-oriented interests, has put together dossiers on 28 potential nominees, said Curt Levey, the group's executive director.

Former attorney general Edwin Meese III, a conservative icon from the Reagan administration, called Obama's statements on the job "troubling," potentially signaling the appointment of a "would-be activist."

Because the court has only one woman among its nine justices, most observers have predicted that Obama will select a woman for the first court opening.

Among legal and political observers, speculation has focused on a field that includes at least one candidate who could offer the high court its first Hispanic justice and a second woman on the bench: Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

Other potential candidates are said to include the Obama administration's solicitor general, Elena Kagan, and Judge Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago and Judge Kim Wardlaw of the 9th Circuit in California.

The names of Kathleen Sullivan, former dean of the Stanford Law School, and Seth Waxman, a former U.S.solicitor general, have surfaced in some circles, as has that of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

The White House is also considering the role the justice might play in building majorities on the court.

But first and foremost, Obama said Friday, he is looking for someone who reads the law with something more than sophistication.

"I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes," the president said. "I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role."

Jim Oliphant contributed to this report.