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Rumored Retirement of Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist Throws U.S. Into Nomination Frenzy

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 8, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Widely read and highly connected conservative Chicago Sun-Times journalist Robert Novak indicated yesterday that Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist will personally announce his retirement to president Bush tonight. Novak wrote, “Adding to the tension is word from court sources that ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist also will announce his retirement before the week is over”.

Other news sources, including the highly reputable Drudge Report have adopted Novak’s statement as fact.

The news confirms weeks of speculation that cancer-stricken Rehnquist would add his retirement to that of Justice O’Connor.

With an already heated and expensive battle waging over possible candidates to fill a single vacancy in the United States’ highest court, the announcement of a second vacancy is certain to further stir the frenzy. A twin vacancy effectively opens up a slew of complications with potentially devastating implications for leaders of Bush’s conservative political base who have nursed hopes that the President might finally tip the ideological balance of the Supreme Court by appointing a justice who is in-step with their core principles.

However, the conservative Novak concisely summed up the worst of the possible consequences of Rehnquist’s retirement when he wrote that the twin vacancy “would enable Bush to play this game: Name one justice no less conservative than Rehnquist, and name Gonzales, whose past record suggests he would replicate retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on abortion and possibly other social issues. Thus, the present ideological orientation of the court would be unchanged, which would suit the left just fine.”

Nothing, conservatives contest, could be worse than the Court’s status quo, which would leave the Court with a firm liberal majority, effectively killing their hopes that faithfulness to the Constitution and the intentions of the Founders might be federally restored. But with two vacancies, it now becomes increasingly likely Democrats within the Senate will argue that Bush ought to at least strive for ‘balance’ and appoint one social conservative, one social liberal, and that if he doesn’t they will come through on their threat to oppose and filibuster at least one of Bush’s nominees.

Attorney General Gonzales’ comments that he is “not a candidate” for the Supreme Court, reported in the Denver Post, seem not to have been taken seriously by most commentators. And with a second vacancy opening in the court it is becoming increasingly likely that the right’s worst nightmare—that nothing will change, and everything will stay the same—could become a reality.

This will be perhaps the greatest test of the sincerity of Bush's oft-stated commitment to restoring a culture of life.

JJ

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