Rehnquist to announce retirement tonight (moved from ATSNN)

The Drudge Report is reporting that Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist will be officially announcing his retirement this evening, Friday July 8th. The retirement of Rehnquist has been long expected as he has been battling cancer. This retirement will mean that the President now has to appoint 2 new justices to the Supreme Court.



Matt Drudge usually gets good info and seems to have scooped everyone here as I have seen nothing yet on the major news sites. This is shaping up to be a major political battle between the President and the Democrats in the Senate as now 2 new justices have to be picked, as well as a new Chief Justice. With all of the bickering over the nuclear option and filibusters with district court judges, I can't imagine the fireworks that will occur over these nominations. This will definetely have a huge impact on the future of the court, as well as the debate over judicial activism vs. original intent.

Interesting...this will probably result in two new confirmation hearings since Bush will likely elevate Scalia to the position of Chief Justice and appoint a new associate Justice. It won't be a dull summer in the Senate.

Heard Novak on CNN say his source said the same thing but couldn't verify that it would happen today, just sometime this week.
Now who else will he pick, he could stack the Supreme Court his way.

I wouldn't be too concerned that Bush would try to "stack" the court for two reasons:

1) Any effort to force upon the Senate supreme court appointees who dramatically change the balance of the Court will be met with huge resistance.

2) Many previous efforts in history to "stack" the court have backfired against the appointing President due to the fact that once you are a Supreme Court Justice, you are, ultimately almost as powerful as the President (albeit in the Judicial Branch) and, therefore, are no longer beholden to political promises and friendships which might have landed you the position. Remember, it is easy to be conservative or liberal on the Court, but not to be corrupt.

If this announcement occurs as anticipated it will indeed be an extended 4th of July in the Senate.

I think it's clear that no annoucement will be made tonight, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Chief Justice does retire soon.

There's also rumors that Ginsburg and/or Stevens could also be resigning in the near future.