Supreme Court Contenders: How Green Are They?

As far as our legal system goes, Supreme Court confirmation hearings are as big as March Madness or the Oscars. Endless speculation leads up to the Big Fight, with media pundits weighing in on all the potential candidates and special interests groups reading all of the candidates' past rulings and/or personal statements' to try to figure out what kind of judge each would make.

The search to appoint a successor to Justice John Paul Stevens is especially worrying to environmentalists. Stevens has been one of the environment's biggest defenders, and his retirement comes at a time when legislation over climate change is heating up. On the other side of the aisle, conservatives are already flinging fistfuls of mud at any and all suggestions for replacements (including an early false rumor about a possible Hillary Clinton pick).

But just who is being considered as a replacement? The Obama Administration insists that it's casting a wide net for potential candidates, wider in fact than the one cast last year that resulted in Sonia Sotomayor's nomination.

Why? Well, for one thing, the Administration may be feeling more ready for the fight than last year, following the successful passage of the Health Care Reform bill. For another, President Obama is a Constitutional law scholar (it's what he taught back in Illinois) and is probably well aware of the impending tilt of the ideological scale post-Stevens.

The next Justice could play a pivotal role in the future of environmental justice. But since it would be impossible to give you the lowdown on every candidate under consideration, we'll follow Grist's lead and zero in on the three candidates that popular wisdom considers to be front runners.

First and foremost is Elena Kagan, currently solicitor general for the Obama administration. In that capacity, Kagan has been arguing the U.S. government's cases before the Court. Though the whack jobs are already takin aim at Kagan by decrying her lack of judicial experience, wiser and calmer folk point out that neither Earl Warren or Louis Brandeis had served as judges either, and both were considered exemplar Justices. And if environmentalists are worried about Kagan being a tabula rasa, well, consider the fact that as dean if Harvard Law School, Kagan not only founded the school's Environmental Law Program, but went so far as to raid UCLA's faculty for one of the field's top minds.

Grist considers the next candidate, Merrick Garland, to be the "insider" candidate, the guy from inside the beltway who is most palatable to Republicans. Garland currently sits on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. As far as his environmental record goes, however, it's important to note that in a case that pitted Earthjustice and the Sierra Club against the Bush Administration, Garland not only sided with the environmentalists, but wrote the court's opinion on the case.

The last candidate with front runner status is Diane Wood. Currently on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Wood is an unabashed liberal (yay!) who successfully defended the Clean Water Act in SWANCC v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. According to Grist, Wood's majority opinion held that regulations should apply to seasonable and non-navigable waterways, a point that had been unclear because of the law's ambiguous language. Interestingly, the Supreme Court later struck down this decision. If Woods is Obama's pick and makes it through the confirmation process, she may have the chance to decide the issue again.
Photo Credit: Jay Tamboli