Nominee May Come From Outside the Judiciary

By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor
July 13, 2005

(CNSNews.com) -- The four senators who met with President Bush at the White House Tuesday morning discussed a number of potential Supreme Court nominees, but Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he thinks they've agreed not to name those names.

"We have a long ways to go," Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters after the breakfast meeting at the White House. He said President Bush has hundreds or thousands of names to go through and "he didn't give us any names."

Nevertheless, Reid added, "There were a lot of names discussed at the meeting, of which we're not going to talk about any of those names. I think that's an agreement that we have, and we'll stick by that."

[The names of women and Hispanics did come up, Sen. Patrick Leahy later told Fox News.]
Reid said there's been enough "discussion, debate and contention on judges." He said he hopes to avoid that scenario in the weeks ahead.

Reid said the friendly relationship between the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) -- have "set an example" of how Reid and Sen. Frist should get along.

"I feel comfortable and good that we are going to be able to have someone who is a consensus candidate. I certainly hope so," Reid concluded.

A consensus candidate is anyone acceptable to Democrats.

Diversity
Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called it a "very productive session," with President Bush listening to the "advice" offered by senators.
Specter said it's possible that the Supreme Court nominee will not come from the traditional circuit courts.

Speaking for himself, Specter said it "would be good to have some diversity" on the Supreme Court, and he mentioned the possibility of having a former senator on the court, as has happened in the past.

"That was one item that the president listened [to]," Specter said. The U.S. Constitution does not require a Supreme Court justice to be an attorney or a judge.

'Uniter'
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called Tuesday's meeting with Bush a "first step" in the consultation process, and he also seemed to back the idea of selecting someone from outside the "judicial monastery."

Leahy said whoever the nominee is, it must be somebody who would "unite us and not divide us" and somebody who would garner bipartisan support.

"That would be a great thing to do for the integrity of the court, for the comfort level of the country, because after all, the court is there for every one of the 280 million Americans, not there for any special interest group on the right or the left."

Leahy called this an important decision, and he alluded to the possibility that there may be similar decisions ahead -- an oblique reference to the widely discussed possibility that Chief Justice William Rehnquist may also retire soon.

'Dignity'
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said senators made it "very clear" to the president that they're ready to engage in a "fair" process that "treats the nominee with dignity and respect and that will be conducted in a timely way."

Specter told reporters, "The word ought to go out that the special interest groups vastly overstate their influence" in the selection process; and that much of what they're doing is "counterproductive, and a lot of the times, insulting."

Frist said there's a general agreement that the goal is to have a nominee on the court by early October.

Sen. Reid told reporters there is no timeline for the president to name someone. "I would hope he would do it in the next couple of weeks," Reid said, adding that it's up to the president.