Among the Contenders
President Bush has gone back to a pool of judges long under consideration. Three of the most talked about:
A Long Paper Trail to Follow
Nicknamed "Scalito" for views resembling those of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito Jr. is a favorite son of the political right. Appointed in 1990 by George H. W. Bush to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito has earned a reputation for intellectual rigor and polite but frequent dissent in a court that has been historically liberal.
A New Jersey native, the 55-year-old Alito received a bachelor's degree from Princeton and graduated from Yale Law School. He worked in the solicitor general's office during the Reagan administration and was a U.S. attorney for New Jersey when George H. W. Bush nominated him to the Third Circuit. His 15 years on the bench have been marked by strong conservatism on a case-by-case basis that avoids sweeping opinions on constitutionality.
In 1999, Alito authored the majority opinion upholding a city's right to stage a holiday display that included a Nativity scene and a menorah because the city also included secular symbols and a banner emphasizing the importance of diversity.
Off the bench, friends and colleagues describe Alito--married and the father of two--as quiet, with a wry sense of humor. "He's mild mannered and generous and family oriented," says Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey lawyer who has known Alito for years. "I don't agree with him on many issues, but I have the utmost respect for him. No one can question his intelligence or integrity." -Bret Schulte
Steeped in the High Court
Rigorous analysis has been a hallmark of Michael Luttig's legal career. As a student at the University of Virginia School of Law, he devised an independent study project to analyze the complete circuit court decisions of Warren Burger. "He approached the project with a dogged determination that still impresses me," says Prof. A. E. Dick Howard.
It was at Burger's urging that Luttig, then a court aide, went to law school. He later was an appeals court clerk for Antonin Scalia and in 1991 became one of the nation's youngest federal appellate judges at 37.
Luttig is known for meticulously drafted opinions and adherence to established law. "Other than conscience, it is only analytical rigor, and the accountability that such renders possible, that can restrain a judiciary that serves for life and is at the pleasure of no one," he wrote in a 2001 decision. -Alex Kingsbury
A Woman With Strong Opinions
Janice Rogers Brown has come a long way. At the moment, she sits on the federal appeals court in Washington. But she was born in Alabama in 1949 to African-American sharecropper parents. She was inspired to become a lawyer by watching Fred Gray, a civil rights attorney who represented both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.
Though raised in a Democratic family, Brown gradually veered from her liberal roots. She attended UCLA law school as a single mother, worked for former California Gov. Pete Wilson, and became the first African-American woman on the state Supreme Court. She has often credited a deep Christian faith for guiding her through her work and has argued that judges should look to higher authorities than man-made laws. "Janice is informed by her experience growing up black in the segregated South," says lawyer Steve Merksamer, a friend. "She recognizes that sometimes laws are wrong."
In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society at the University of Chicago while she was an associate justice on the California Supreme Court, Brown compared liberalism to slavery. And she has called big government the "drug of choice" for much of American society.
Democrats fear she is a judicial activist who is opposed to government, abortion, and affirmative action. She has written opinions that supported a state law requiring girls under 18 to notify their parents before getting an abortion. In addition, her relationship with colleagues on the California Supreme Court was known to be testy. In her dissent to the court's opinion overturning the law requiring parental consent for abortions for minors, she said her colleagues' decision underscored "the folly of judges in the role of philosopher kings." -Bay Fang
This story appears in the November 7, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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