From what Ann Althouse has found out, Democrats should not push the "extraordinary circumstances" panic button if Michael Luttig, of the Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is nominated as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Luttig is "an ardent conservative." He is also, if you believe this description in The Chicago Tribune, the kind of judge you want (or ought to want) on the Supreme Court:
[H]is record reveals his independence . . . .He has stressed . . . intellectual honesty and adherence to precedent. He tells law clerks they will be fired if they fail to show him contradicting authority on a particular issue or tell him exactly how they view the case, even if they do not share his views. His clerks praise him as a teacher--and 40 of 42 have gone on to clerk at the Supreme Court, an unparalleled placement record.
Luttig has been highly critical of judicial activism on both sides of the ideological spectrum, in which he believes judges have decided cases based on a desired outcome instead of adhering to established law and taking that where it leads.
"At the end of the day, 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," Luttig wrote in a 2001 case.
His opinion writing is crisp and clear [and his dissents, sometimes from the opinions of conservative colleagues, are emphatic].
Go read it all, but he sounds unBorkable, and trustworthy, to me.
- amba
Comments