For President Obama, Many Gaps to Fill on the Bench

By Phillip Carter, Associate, McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP

Many argue that the Supreme Court lacks diversity. As President Obama closes in on a nominee, 10 legal experts make their case for the kind of justice the court needs.

When Justice John Paul Stevens retires, the Supreme Court will be left without a sitting war veteran. He enlisted in the Navy the day before Pearl Harbor and, as an intelligence officer, was involved with the code-breaking efforts in the Pacific. Decades later, Justice Stevens’s service gave him a visceral appreciation for war and the military institution, and left in him a healthy skepticism toward executive power, particularly the use of that power in wartime. This carried forward into some of his most important opinions, as in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in 2006, which ruled military commissions inconsistent with the Geneva conventions and America’s system of military justice.

To read the full op ed in The New York Times, go to http://nyti.ms/bNTGhL.