Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Your girl has a bad case of SCOTUS.


Your favorite pandemic may be the Swine Flu, you trendy scenester you. You may have a personal weakness for SARS or a historic crush on Small Pox or the deadlier Spanish Flu. I'm not going to fight you if you come down on the side of the Bubonic Plague, classic as basic black.

That said, these diseases are not for me. I have caught a bug all my own, and let's be frank, all I want to do is read about the various possibilities in line to replace Justice Souter* in the Supreme Court when he retires this summer. SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States, has long been an object of interest for me. I can offer no clever explanation of the origin of my chronic interest in the goings on of the gavel wielding. Sorry if the blog posts about the bench have become too much, but if you come back after the confirmation hearings, odds are on there will be a post or two about zombies or pies.

That said, there are resources on hand for those similarly afflicted. I tend to stick with SCOTUSblog, which is no nonsense and gives concise updates on arguments and opinions as they are delivered. Underneath Their Robes, a gossip site about the federal judiciary, is a girltalk confection, a kind of Perez Hilton for the judicial groupie. Above the Law, a similar site that I like less, has a leaderboard of potential Souter replacements. Sonia Sotomayar is leading there, and she's a reasonable choice. You know me, so you know I'm rooting for Kathleen Sullivan, a professor of law at Stanford who has presented amicus curiae to the court in the past. She's a big lesbian, an equal rights activist, and wrote the book I studied in my con law class in college. She could keep my beloved Bader Ginsburg company. I would be perfectly happy with Elena Kagan too.

Here are three opinion articles I've read recently about the Hopefuls:
Slate ran an article about the prejudices facing single women.
Daily Beast reported on a big, fat problem.
Vanity Fair presented an awkward reunion option.

* I will miss him.

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