A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

The Washington Post details likely candidates for nomination:

With President Bush expected to pick a new Supreme Court nominee within days, several sources close to the selection process said the White House is focusing on a short list of appellate court judges vetted this summer before he nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to the high court.

The administration has backed away from any insistence that the nominee be a woman or a minority. Rather, it is focused on potential nominees who have previously won Senate confirmation, whose intellectual qualifications would be unquestioned and who have paper trails that make clear their conservative credentials, said one source who is close to the nomination process.

Those candidates, according to the sources, include several federal appellate judges, among them: Samuel A. Alito Jr., J. Michael Luttig, Michael W. McConnell, Emilio M. Garza, Priscilla R. Owen and Edith H. Jones. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the discussions.

By focusing on such candidates, the Bush administration is shifting to what one source described as President Ronald Reagan's doctrine of picking justices. "The nominee can't be a stealth candidate for a number of reasons," the source said. "There are very, very few people who have the kind of credentials that the administration can put up in this environment that would not have a record."

Any of the named candidates would be excellent picks. I have glaned from elsewhere in the Blogosphere that Alito and Luttig are prime candidates. The President would go a long way towards repairing the damage done by the Miers nomination by picking them.

UPDATE: More on Alito: 

The short list of potential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court suddenly appeared much shorter Friday as 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. quickly emerged as perhaps the most likely second choice to fill Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat.

In the wake of Harriet Miers' withdrawal of her nomination, the New York Times reported Friday that Alito was one of three "finalists" three weeks ago when Miers was chosen. The other, according to the Times, was 4th Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig. Hours later, on the popular law blog, SCOTUSblog.com, attorney Tom Goldstein was predicting that Alito would be picked -- and soon.

"Judge Alito would energize the president's conservative supporters. But he would not be as much of a fight as the others. Luttig and [5th Circuit Judge Priscilla] Owen, in particular, raise the serious prospect of a filibuster and it seems unlikely in the current environment that the administration is anxious to have that fight," Goldstein wrote.

"It seems to me that the pressure to nominate a woman is considerably lessened now, and the focus is on getting someone confirmed. Judge Alito will be grudgingly confirmable to many Democrats once they look at his record," Goldstein wrote.

Goldstein's political calculus could prove to be dead on, especially if the White House is intent on moving quickly and avoiding an ugly confirmation battle.

Born on April Fool's Day in 1950, the 55-year-old Alito might be exactly what Bush is looking for. His resume reads like a recipe for high court consideration -- beginning with undergrad studies at Princeton, perhaps the Ivy League's most welcoming home for conservatives seeking elite educations, and a law degree from Yale, the Bush family's sentimental favorite.

After a clerkship with 3rd Circuit Judge Leonard I. Garth, Alito worked as a front-line federal prosecutor in New Jersey for four years. But soon after President Ronald Reagan was elected, Alito joined the Office of the Solicitor General, staying for four years and helping to decide what position the administration would take in cases up for review by the Supreme Court.

That was followed by a three-year stint at Main Justice as a deputy assistant attorney general. In 1987, at the age of 37, Alito was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, a post he held until he was tapped in 1990 by the first President Bush to join the 3rd Circuit.

On the hot-button issues, Alito has been consistently conservative -- so conservative that some lawyers have given him the nickname "Scalito." Roughly translated, the nickname means "Little Scalia," suggesting that Alito has modeled his judicial philosophy after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

If Alito is nominated and his record is put under the national microscope, conservatives are likely to be happy with what they see.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Alito from law professor Eric Muller. And check out this article on another contender; Judge Diane Sykes from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A THIRD UPDATE: A generally encouraging commentary from Dave Kopel regarding the attitude of various candidates towards the Second Amendment. Concerning Judges Luttig and Alito, we have the following:

In the case of Love v. Pepersack, Judge Luttig concurred in an opinion rejecting a section 1983 claim for an erroneous denial of a handgun license by the state of Maryland. Judge Luttig's concurrence stated, in its entirity: "I concur only in the judgment reached by the majority, and I do so only because Gardner v. Baltimore Mayor and City Council, 969 F.2d 63 (4th Cir. 1992), is the law of the circuit." The Gardner case involved a narrow interpretation of substantive due process.

In United States v. Rybar, Judge Alito wrote a blistering dissent from the majority opinion which held that, notwithstanding United States v. Lopez, Congress had the power to use the Interstate Commerce power to prohibit the mere possession of machine guns manufactured after May 1986, even though Congress had made no findings about the effect of such machine guns on interstate commerce. Judge Alito's dissent did not address the majority's assertion that Rybar had no Second Amendment rights because Rybar was not a member of the militia.

Neither case clearly shows Judges Luttig or Alito to support or oppose the Standard Model of the Second Amendment. However, I believe that both opinions suggest that judges Luttig and Alito are, at the least, not hostile to the Second Amendment. Moreover, a generous reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, and a willingness to take Lopez seriously are in themselves good signs for persons who support judicial enforcement of the right to keep and bear arms.