Will there be a vacancy to be filled at the USSC?

Today is the last day of the term for the US Supreme court. In addition to some final decisions to be handed down, there is much speculation as to if one or more of the justices could possibly be retiring.

Most centers around Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He is in poor health, having undergone cancer treatments during the last court term that forced him to miss some of the sessions.

Then there is Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard speculating that Rehnquist will stay and Sandra O'Connor will be the one to retire. Supposedly she has been leaving hints that she'll be returning back home to Arizona. Kristol also mused that Rehnquist would not retire if O'Connor did. The reasoning being that the Chief Justice wouldn't want to hamper the court with two vacancies. Though when Rehnquist was nominated both for Associate Justice in 1971 and CJ in 1986 there were two vacancies/nominations in both instances. Justice John Harlan retiring and Hugo Black's death in 71 and Rehnquist being bumped upwards in 86 will Antonin Scalia being nominated to his seat on the bench.

Amusing thing is in those Pre-Bork days the fiercely conservative Scalia was approved by the Senate unanimously. That will never happen again.

My own opinion is that Rehnquist should retire because the later it gets into the Bush second term the fiercer the political battle is likely to become. He's been a great CJ but its time to step down.

If O'Connor wants to step down, I feel she should. One nomination or two, I feel the Court needs to through this long expected overhaul phase. If I were placing bets, I'd say Michael McConnell to replace Rehnquist as CJ and Either Edith Brown Clement or Alberto Gonzales to replace O'Connor. Clement's name came up for the seat Souter got in 1990 and Gonzales is of course Attorney General at the moment.

There's always my secret hope that Justice Fedex aka John Paul Stephens would retire finally. At age 85 it is quite obvious he is already senile

Hat-tip to Michelle Malkin