Possible candidates

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Alito has earned the conservative
stripes that put him into the running
for a Supreme Court vacancy.

As a member of the circuit that
comprises New Jersey, Pennsylvania
and Delaware, Alito was the lone dissenter
in two significant cases: one that
overturned a Pennsylvania law requiring
that a husband be notified before
his wife gets an abortion, and another
that did not put a higher burden of
proof on people seeking to make sexual
discrimination claims.

Alito who was born in Trenton, N.J.,
has the credentials to be in the hunt for
a new justice: an undergraduate degree
from Princeton and a law degree from
Yale, soon followed by seven years in
the Reagan administration.

In 1987, he became the U.S. attorney
in New Jersey. President George Bush
named him to the 3rd Circuit in 1990.
Though he is known for carving out a
judicial reputation similar to Justice
Antonin Scalia — intellectually admirable
but predictably conservative —
he is said to lack Scalia’s feisty manner.

EDITH BROWN CLEMENT
Age: 57
School: Tulane Law School
Background:: Judge on the U.S. District Court,
Eastern District of Louisiana.

Currently: Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 5th Circuit (appointed 2001).

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Clement might be the least known of
potential nominees. Clement was
among the first batch of judges appointed
or elevated when President
Bush came into office in 2001. Without a
contentious hearing, Clement sailed
through the Senate on a unanimous
vote when she joined the 5th Circuit in
November 2001.

Her greatest fame probably came
when she was a district judge in Louisiana
and presided over the trial of former
Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards,
at one point threatening to fine him
$1,000 a word if he violated a gag order.
A native of Alabama, Clement went
to the University of Alabama and Tulane
Law School. She was in private
practice in Louisiana before President
George Bush named her to the District
Court in 1991.

Clement has compiled a solid record
on the 5th Circuit. While there are no
opinions in her resume that should
generate conservative support, neither
are there any that seem likely to cause
widespread opposition.

EMILIO GARZA
Age: 58

School: University of Texas School of Law

Background:: Marine captain, Texas trial judge,
U.S. district judge in the Western District of
Texas.

Currently: Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 5th Circuit (appointed 1991).

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Garza came close to the Supreme
Court 14 years ago. President George
Bush interviewed him after Thurgood
Marshall retired but ended up picking
Clarence Thomas. At the time, Garza
had spent only a few months on the
Court of Appeals.

Now there would be no question of
experience; Garza has spent more than
a decade on the 5th Circuit, compiling
a generally conservative record, though
his upholding of Supreme Court precedents
supporting abortion rights could
give pause to social conservatives.
A native of San Antonio, Garza is a
former Marine captain who graduated
from Notre Dame University and the
University of Texas Law School.
He was in private practice when
President Ronald Reagan put him on
the District Court in 1988. At the time,
he was the youngest District Court
judge in the country.

Three years later, in confirmation
hearings for the appellate seat, Garza
denounced legislating from the bench.

ALBERTO R. GONZALES
Age: 49

School: Harvard Law School

Background:: General counsel to then-Texas
Gov. George W. Bush, lawyer at Vinson &
Elkins, justice of the Supreme Court of
Texas, White House counsel to Bush.

Currently: U.S. attorney general

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Gonzales brings a compelling personal
story and a friendship with President
Bush to the table. Born in San
Antonio, Gonzales was the second of
eight children of migrant workers. He
went to public schools, joined the Air
Force and graduated from Rice University
and then Harvard Law School.

Gonzales joined Bush’s gubernatorial
administration in 1994, taking several
roles before he was appointed to
the Texas Supreme Court. In January
2001, he was named counsel to the
president. After his re-election, Bush
nominated Gonzales to attorney general.
Opponents focused on memos he
oversaw that justified controversial interrogation
tactics for terror suspects.

In his time on the Texas court, Gonzales
did not compile a conservative
record. When his name surfaced as a
potential Supreme Court nominee,
critics on the right said he wasn’t conservative
enough, while others complained
that he did not have a strong
judicial resume.

EDITH HOLLAN JONES
Age: 56

School: University of Texas Law School

Background:: Attorney at the Houston law firm
Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones.

Currently: Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 5th Circuit (appointed in 1985).

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Jones was the first female partner at
the Houston law firm now known as Andrews
& Kurth, active in Republican
politics and a recognized expert on
bankruptcy law.

But she has also been widely viewed
as too conservative to survive a grueling
confirmation battle. Amid the speculation
that followed Sandra Day O’Connor’s
retirement announcement, Jones
was loudly criticized by liberal groups.

As a judge on the New Orleansbased
5th Circuit, she once wrote a dissenting
opinion arguing that a district
court’s dismissal of a sexual harassment
case should be upheld because
the harassment had come at the hands
of co-workers, not a supervisor.

Jones has received the most attention
for her writing in a 2004 case in
which the 5th Circuit turned away a
challenge to abortion rights by the original
“Jane Roe.” Jones questioned some
of the central findings of the Supreme
Court’s 1970 decision in Roe v. Wade:

“If courts were to delve into the facts
underlying Roe’s balancing scheme
with present-day knowledge, they
might conclude that the woman’s
‘choice’ is far more risky and less beneficial,
and the child’s sentience far more
advanced, than the Roe court knew.”

MICHAEL LUTTIG
Age: 51

School: University of Virginia School of Law

Background:: White House assistant counsel
for Ronald Reagan and in the Justice Department
during the administration of the
first President Bush.

Currently: Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 4th Circuit (appointed 1991).

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Luttig, a Texas native, went to Virginia
in 1972 to attend Washington and
Lee University and never left. He went
to the University of Virginia law school
and spent most of his legal career at
the Justice Department before he was
appointed to the Court of Appeals in
1991 by President George Bush.

Luttig was mentored early in his career
by Chief Justice Warren Burger
and is known for being networked into
the Supreme Court.

Though considered a conservative
thinker, Luttig’s intellectual rigor often
leads him away from doctrinaire positions.
For instance, though he had previously
voted to uphold Virginia’s ban
on “partial-birth” abortions, after the
Supreme Court ruled on the issue, Luttig
wrote in 2000 that the state law
must be struck down.

In a concurring opinion in a 2001
case called Safety-Kleen v. Wyche,
which hinged on technical arguments
about issuing preliminary injunctions,
Luttig criticized judges who easily ignore
both the plight of those before the
court and Supreme Court precedents.

MICHAEL McCONNELL
Age: 50

School: University of Chicago Law School

Background:: Law professor at the University
of Chicago and the University of Utah, appellate
attorney for the firm Mayer Brown.

Currently: Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 10th Circuit (appointed 2002).

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McConnell has the imprimatur of
two important pieces of the conservative
legal establishment. One is his
work in the Reagan administration —
in the solicitor general’s office and as
an assistant general counsel in the Office
of Management and Budget. The
other is a stint teaching at the University
of Chicago Law School, the think
tank of conservative legal scholarship
that produced Justice Antonin Scalia.
But McConnell also clerked for the
liberal Justice William J. Brennan Jr.
He has been fervent in his opposition
to Roe v. Wadebut also criticized the
Supreme Court for its decision in Bush
v. Gore. He has supported state aid to
parochial schools and the rights of an
Indian tribe to use the hallucinogenic
drug peyote in its ceremonies.

In an opinion piece for The Wall
Street Journal, he wrote that Roe v.
Wadewas “an embarrassment to those
who take constitutional law seriously.”
But in his 2002 confirmation hearings
for a seat on the 10th Circuit Court of
Appeals, he said it was “settled law.”
During his years on the 10th Circuit,
he has not written any opinions likely
to excite supporters or opponents.

J. HARVIE WILKINSON III
Age: 60

School: University of Virginia School of Law

Background:: Law professor at the University
of Virginia. He was also at the Justice Department
during the Reagan administration
and served as the editorial-page editor of
The Virginian-Pilotin Norfolk, Va.

Currently: Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 4th Circuit (appointed 1984).

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The first summer job that Jay
Wilkinson had in high school was a
messenger for a Richmond law firm.
He was hired by a friend of his parents,
Lewis Powell. When Powell was named
to the Supreme Court in 1971, Wilkinson
was the first clerk he hired.

Wilkinson had graduated from Yale
University in 1967, spent two years in
the Army, ran unsuccessfully for the
House of Representatives, then went
to law school.

He taught at Virginia for three
years after clerking for Powell, and
then joined the Virginian-Pilotas editor
of its editorial page. He went to
Washington in 1982, working in the
Civil Rights Division of the Reagan administration’s
Justice Department.

Reagan appointed him to the 4th Circuit
in 1984, and he has been there ever
since, serving a seven-year rotation as
chief judge from 1996 to 2003.
Wilkinson has carved out a solid
conservative reputation, but he has
also made himself a center of courtesy
and collegiality on what has often been
a contentious court.