Oops. In all the excitement of the past couple of weeks, I completely forgot about my much-ballyhooed contest: The person who came closest to predicting the Senate vote on the Sonia Sotomayor/Supreme Court confirmation wins a genuine 1976 Jimmy Carter for President bumper sticker.

I picked Carter because he was the only president to serve a full term and never get to name someone to the court. It's only fair.

On Aug. 6, the Senate voted 68-31 to confirm Sotomayor.

Of the hundreds of responses, two -- from Andrea Bieling of Washington, D.C. and Melanie Turner of Albuquerque, N.M. -- came the closest, at 68-32. And so they each get a Carter bumper sticker.

Congratulations!

There is little suspense to next week's Senate confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The only question is whether she gets more than 70 votes.

Here is a listing of the most "no" votes in the Senate against a court nominee since World War II.

Robert Bork -- 58 (rejected 42-58, 10/23/87)
Clement Haynsworth -- 55 (rejected 45-55, 11/21/69)
G. Harrold Carswell -- 51 (rejected 45-51, 4/8/70)
Clarence Thomas -- 48 (confirmed 52-48, 10/15/91)
Samuel Alito -- 42 (confirmed 58-42, 1/31/06)
William Rehnquist (for chief justice) -- 33 (confirmed 65-33, 9/17/86)
William Rehnquist -- 26 (confirmed 12/10/71)
John Roberts (for chief justice) -- 22 (confirmed 78-22, 9/29/05)
Potter Stewart -- 17 (confirmed 70-17, 5/5/59)
Sherman Minton -- 16 (confirmed 48-16, 10/4/49)

The announcement yesterday by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee that he intends to vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court makes him the sixth Republican to do so -- joining Snowe & Collins (Maine), Martinez (Florida), Lugar (Indiana) and Graham (South Carolina).

Hotline On Call lists other Republicans who in their estimation are "most likely to flip," in this order: Judd Gregg (NH), John McCain (AZ), Kit Bond (MO), George Voinovich (OH) and John Ensign (NV).

I would think all are possible except for Ensign. (HOC acknowledges the Nevada Republican is a "long shot.") Gregg, Bond and Voinovich are retiring next year.

They also say that Democrats Ben Nelson (NE) and Mark Begich (AK) "could buck the party to keep the faith with their conservative home states" by voting no. I say no way. Every Democrat will vote for Sotomayor, a vote that could come on Thursday.

In a speech on the Senate floor this morning, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said he will vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court -- becoming the sixth Republican to do so.

Alexander acknowledged differences he had with Sotomayor over gun rights and the Second Amendment. But he praised her "experience, temperament, character and intellect."

Alexander, who is not up until 2014, is the third-ranking Republican in the Senate.

In addition to Alexander, the other Republicans who have signaled they will vote to confirm Sotomayor are Snowe & Collins of Maine, Lugar of Indiana, Martinez of Florida and Graham of South Carolina.

The Senate is expected to vote on the nomination next week, perhaps Thursday.

No surprises.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

All 12 Democrats, plus South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, voted yes.

The remaining six Republicans voted no.

Final tally: 13-6.

The Senate Judiciary Committee meets at 10 a.m. ET to vote on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Only one Republican on the committee -- Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina conservative -- has said he will vote to confirm her, so it looks like the tally will be 13-6.

For those of you who turn to this blog for guidance -- God help those of you who do -- I wrote the following in a July 16 post:

I say the committee will vote 13-6 to confirm.

In interests of full disclosure, however, that prediction was preceded by this:

There's no question that all 12 Democrats will vote for confirmation. I'm guessing that she'll get at least one GOP vote, and I'm thinking it's Orrin Hatch of Utah. Some of my colleagues are inclined to add S.C.'s Graham to that list, but I wonder.

For the record, the last Judiciary Committee vote on a Supreme Court nominee was on Jan. 24, 2006, involving President Bush's choice of Samuel Alito. The committee vote was straight party line: 10 Republicans in favor, 8 Democrats opposed.

In addition to Graham, four other Republicans have said they will support her confirmation, now thought to take place a week from Thursday (Aug. 6): Snowe and Collins of Maine, Lugar of Indiana, and Martinez of Florida.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a conservative Republican who closely grilled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, announces he will vote FOR her nomination.

Graham is the fifth Republican to do so -- joining Snowe & Collins of Maine, Lugar of Indiana, Martinez of Florida. But Graham's vote is the biggest surprise.

Today's scheduled vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court has been postponed until next Tuesday.

Republican senators on the committee, as is their prerogative, asked for a one-week delay. Ranking Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama officially requested the delay, and chairman Pat Leahy accepted it.

The committee will reconvene next Tuesday, July 28.

Sotomayor was endorsed earlier in the day by NARAL ProChoice America, the abortion-rights group. An aide to Sen. Susan Collins said, not surprisingly, that the Maine Republican will vote to confirm Sotomayor. Collins is the fourth Republican who has publicly said she will vote for the New York judge.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is still scheduled to vote tomorrow morning on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice for the U.S. Supreme Court. But the minority does have the right to postpone the vote for a week, and that remains a distinct possibility.

Others have suggested that the nomination will be postponed only until Thursday. We may not know for sure until tomorrow morning at 10, when Judiciary is slated to take up the nomination.

For all the talk of the need for bipartisanship, here is how the Judiciary Committee voted on the two Bush nominees in 2005 and 2006.

Samuel Alito: Judiciary Committee approved nomination by a straight 10-8 party-line vote on 1/24/06.

John Roberts: Committee approved nomination by 13-5 vote on 9/22/05. All 10 Republicans voted yes, joined by three Democrats -- Pat Leahy (VT), Russ Feingold (WI) and Herb Kohl (WI).

Ostensibly, it's about Sonia Sotomayor. Should she, or not, be confirmed to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

But it's much more than that. Democrats know it, Republicans know it, President Obama knows it, and I suspect the nominee does as well. And so does everyone watching the confirmation hearings on television.

Continue reading "Slights, Revenge And, Oh Yeah, Sotomayor: My Confirmation Diary" >

Submission of predictions to our Sotomayor Confirmation Contest is now over.

We asked you what you thought the final Senate confirmation tally would be for Sonia Sotomayor being confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. With the confirmation hearings beginning on Monday in the Judiciary Committee, the time to have submitted your predictions is now over.

The first person with the exact Senate vote wins a 1976 Jimmy Carter for President bumper sticker -- Carter, because he's the only president who served a full term but never had the opportunity to nominate someone to the Supreme Court.

Conservatives trace court confirmation battles back to Robert Bork in 1987. But there was also the Fortas filibuster in '68.

A very good piece in Friday's New York Times by Neil Lewis about the opposition to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor by conservatives. Putting aside for a moment the arguments to her being confirmed, Lewis writes that "the fervor with which some of those criticisms have been hurled may not be just about Judge Sotomayor":

Those emotions, say people who have followed the confirmation wars, are often fueled by the sense of grievance among conservatives and Republicans who say their judicial nominees have been treated unfairly and, sometimes, disrespectfully.

Lewis quotes conservative scholar Richard Epstein at the University of Chicago who says "he had concluded that the case against Judge Sotomayor was thin but that it was energized by the anger over the treatment of past conservative nominees like Robert H. Bork, who lost his confirmation battle in 1987, and Clarence Thomas, who was narrowly confirmed four years later.

Continue reading "Opposing Sotomayor: The Revenge Of Bork?" >

With today being the last day of the current session of the U.S. Supreme Court, the expectation was that there would be a decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

This is the case about a documentary totally critical of Hillary Clinton (Hillary: The Movie) that was made by a conservative group and shown last year during her presidential bid, and whether it should be regulated as if it were a campaign ad or expenditure. The group, Citizens United, wanted to make the movie available to cable TV viewers without having to comply with federal campaign finance laws. The Federal Election Commission, among others, insisted that it had to do so.

As it turned out, the court failed to reach a decision and instead said it would hear arguments about the case once again, in a special session of the court on Sept. 9.

NPR's Peter Overby reports that while the court had been expected to address whether such funding for the movie "should be allowed and secretive," instead, the justices "zeroed in on a question that didn't even come up in the oral arguments":

Whether to overturn a 23-year-old decision that controls corporate political money more broadly. In that case, the court said in 1986 that corporate money cannot be used for independent campaign ads. It's been reaffirmed as recently as 2003.

Here are some more details about the case from the Cornell University Law School.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in the Ricci case -- which favored white firefighters in a racial discrimination case -- not only has the potential to affect employment practices nationwide but could also give ammunition to opponents of Sonia Sotomayor, who is President Obama's nominee to fill a court vacancy.

Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, that dismissed the firefighters' claim of discrimination in their suit against the city of New Haven, Conn. Both supporters and opponents of Sotomayor's nomination were closely watching today's court decision to see how -- or if -- the ruling would play out in the confirmation battle.

The guess here: not too much. The 5-4 decision was not unexpected. But I suspect it emboldens some of her opponents to argue the case to be made against her ... as opposed to the silly stuff we saw earlier, such as the "she's a reverse racist" mouthings from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo and Newt Gingrich (though Newt did back away from some of his comments).

Continue reading "Political Fallout Over Ricci Decision On Sotomayor?" >

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning that the city of New Haven, Conn., unfairly denied promotions to white firefighters because of their race.

The 5-4 ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano overturns a decision by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, a panel that included Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Voting in the majority were Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Voting in the minority were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. Souter is retiring after this session, and Sotomayor has been nominated to replace him.

Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and Ginsburg wrote the minority opinion.

The entire decision can be found here.

Today is the last day of the Supreme Court's session, and all eyes -- well, many eyes -- will be on Ricci v. DeStefano. That's the lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, Conn., by white firefighters alleging reverse discrimination regarding promotions.

It's being especially closely watched because of the role played in the rejection of the firefighters' claims by a three-judge panel of the the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit -- a panel that included Sonia Sotomayor, who is President Obama's nominee to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Both pro- and anti-Sotomayor advocacy groups are ready to interpret whatever the Supreme Court decides. Some, like the liberal People For the American Way, are not even waiting for the decision (which is expected to overturn the three-judge panel).

Marge Baker, the executive VP for PFAW, who seems to be expecting a reversal, issued a statement this morning that said whatever the court rules today, it "will not reflect upon Sotomayor's jurisprudence."

Sotomayor and her panel colleagues were bound by longstanding precedent and federal law. They applied the law without regard to their personal views and unanimously affirmed the district court ruling. To do anything but would have been judicial activism.

The full Second Circuit backed up the panel, which came as no surprise. Nearly ten years earlier a Second Circuit panel -- consisting of three GOP nominees -- reached the same conclusion in a similar case (Hayden v. County of Nassau).

When a case virtually identical to Ricci came before the Sixth Circuit -- Oakley v. Memphis -- a panel rejected the plaintiffs' claims and affirmed the district court ruling. Notably, they did so in an unpublished summary order, and one of the three judges was conservative Bush nominee Richard Allen Griffin.

In other words, Sotomayor is anything but an outlier. She and the seven other federal judges who decided Ricci and Oakley at the district and circuit levels were unanimous in determining that precedent and federal law required the rejection of the suits.

The other political case many are watching is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which will decide whether Hillary The Movie is subject to regulation.

Earlier today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act; it said that states with a history of discrimination in voting must get advance approval if they are to make changes in the way elections are conducted. But the court seemed to sidestep the bigger issue of whether there have been enough gains in civil rights that let states make changes in the '65 act without such advance approval.

That leaves just two more decision days by the court before the current term ends. Barbara Campbell, NPR's editor on all things Supreme Court, lists the remaining major cases to be decided:

07-591 Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts: Tests whether lab analysts have to appear in court and be cross-examined when their reports are entered as evidence against a defendant. Does the defendant have a right to confront his accuser? Argued Nov. 10, 2008.

08-205 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: This further challenge to the campaign reform act tests whether Hillary the Movie is subject to regulation since it doesn't urge a vote against her, except by implication. Argued Mar 24.

08-289 Horne v. Flores: Tests whether Arizona is providing enough English learner programs under federal law. Argued April 20.

08-479 Safford Unified School v. Redding: Tests whether Arizona school officials violated a 13-year-old girl's constitutional rights when they strip-searched her looking for ibuprofen. Argued April 21.

07-1428 Ricci v. Destefano: Tests whether the New Haven, Conn., fire department discriminated against top-scoring white firefighters by canceling promotions to look at revamping the test to help minorities. A panel of federal appeals court judges (including Sonia Sotomayor) ruled for the city. Argued April 22.

08-453 Cuomo v. Clearing House: Tests whether the New York attorney general is allowed to investigate whether banks engage in racially discriminatory mortgage lending practices, or if that is solely federal jurisdiction. The larger issue is federal pre-emption of state power regarding banks. Argued April 28.

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said that confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, will begin July 13.

This just in, courtesy The Associated Press:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has broken her ankle in an "airport stumble en route to Senate meetings." Sotomayor, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals who has been nominated by President Obama to succeed retiring Justice David Souter, fractured her ankle at New York's LaGuardia Airport before taking the shuttle to Washington, where she had a busy schedule of meetings with senators.

The White House says she will keep her six appointments, according to the AP report.

Earlier today, on ABC's Good Morning America, former first lady Laura Bush said of Sotomayor, "I think she sounds like a very interesting and good nominee. ... As a woman, I'm proud that there might be another woman on the court. I wish her well."

A reminder that it's not to late to enter our Sonia Sotomayor Senate Vote Contest.

The first person with the exact accurate Senate tally on Sotomayor's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court will win a Jimmy Carter for President bumper sticker -- I'm picking Carter because he's the only president who served a full term but never had the opportunity to nominate someone to the Supreme Court.

Send your prediction to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

(Thanks to Custom Buttons USA of Malverne, N.Y., for the hot-off-the-presses Sotomayor button.)

U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2009. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Here's a rare moment of personal privilege. What follows is a list of things that feel, to me, relevant, and less so, regarding the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

First, and foremost: Was this an affirmative action choice? Was this the dreaded "identity politics" at its worst? I'm not going to pretend that Sotomayor's gender and heritage had nothing to do with her being selected. I'm well aware that of the nine potential court picks President Obama was reviewing, only one was a white male.

Continue reading "Your Sotomayor Scorecard" >

Here's a question from Carol Berman of Baltimore:

What can you tell me about a so-called "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court?

It's not officially called that, of course. But after Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo died in 1938, Felix Frankfurter succeeded him on the court. And when Frankfurter retired in 1962, President Kennedy named another Jew, Arthur Goldberg, to succeed him. That's when the term "Jewish seat" began to be widely used.

Continue reading "The 'Jewish Seat' On The Supreme Court" >

As it turned out, President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, to fill a soon-to-be-vacant seat on the Supreme Court. But he could have picked someone with no legal experience at all.

And that leads to this question from Allen Ayers of Williamsburg, Va.:

The United States Constitution contains no prerequisites for appointment to the Supreme Court. How many U.S. Supreme Court justices have not been lawyers and what were their names?

You are certainly correct about qualifications (or lack of same) to be considered for the Supreme Court. But every single justice on the court, dating back to John Jay, has been a lawyer; each one either attended law school, took law classes, was admitted to the bar, or practiced law.

Back on May 1, following the announcement that David Souter would leave the Supreme Court, we offered the contest of a lifetime:

The first person to correctly guess who President Obama would name to the court wins a genuine "Nixon's the One" bumper sticker from 1968.

Well, this morning, Obama chose federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

And the first person who predicted that was ... Maura Spiegelman of Silver Spring, Md. Maura wins the bumper sticker -- and her name in lights!

Congratulations!

Strange-But-True Dept.: Maura is also a past ScuttleButton puzzle winner!

Sonia Sotomayor is President Obama's choice to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

In 1998, the Senate confirmed Sotomayor, nominated by President Clinton, as a judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. The vote was 67-29. All Democrats present (42) voted yes. The GOP vote was split, with 25 voting yes and 29 voting no. Here's how current Senate Republicans voted on the Sotomayor nomination back in '98:

YES (7): Lugar (IN), Collins (ME), Snowe (ME), Cochran (MS), Gregg (NH), Bennett (UT), Hatch (UT).

NO (11): Sessions (AL), Shelby (AL), Kyl (AZ), McCain (AZ), Grassley (IA), Brownback (KS), Roberts (KS), McConnell (KY), Inhofe (OK), Hutchison (TX), Enzi (WY).

In addition, Pennsylvania's Specter, then a Republican but now a Democrat, voted yes.

NPR has confirmed that President Obama will nominate Sonia Sotomayor, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. If confirmed, she will be the first Hispanic justice on the court as well as the third woman, following Sandra Day O'Connor (1981-2006) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993-present).

The announcement will come at 10:15 a.m. ET in the East Room at the White House.

She was originally named to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992 by the first President Bush. President Clinton named her to the appeals court in 1998.

This will be the first Supreme Court nomination by a Democratic president in 15 years, when Clinton chose Stephen Breyer in 1994.

Ideologically, the nomination should not alter the makeup of the court, as Souter, though appointed by the first President Bush, is a fairly reliably liberal vote.

Katie Trzaska of De Pere, Wis., wants to know:

When was the last time someone with no judicial experience was appointed to the Supreme Court?

The last one was William Rehnquist, who was appointed to the Court by President Nixon in 1971. Rehnquist had been a law clerk to Justice Robert Jackson (in addition to being an assistant U.S. attorney general) but had no judicial experience of his own.

Another Nixon appointee was Lewis Powell, who had been president of the American Bar Association and later president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He too lacked judicial experience.

The fact that all nine justices of the current Supreme Court were formerly appeals court judges is more of a historical anomaly than anything else. Of the nine justices named by FDR, for example, five -- Stanley Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, James Byrnes and Robert Jackson -- all lacked judicial experience.

Yesterday's trivia question in the Political Junkie segment on Talk of the Nation centered on Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Granholm has been mentioned as a possible candidate to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. The question was, who was the last person to run for governor who served on the court?

The answer: Arthur Goldberg, who was the Democratic nominee in 1970 against New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R).

But that led to another question. Granholm was born in Canada. She is constitutionally ineligible to be president, but what about serving on the court?

As it turns out, there are no requirements -- age, place of birth -- for a justice on the Supreme Court. According to the Web site America.gov,

Although the Constitution imposes specific age, residency and citizenship qualifications for the president of the United States and members of Congress, it sets no similar qualifications for Supreme Court justices, except that every candidate must be the president's choice and acceptable to a majority in the Senate. No prior experience as a judge, no expertise as a constitutionalist, indeed, no training in the law at all, is required.

And, in case you were wondering, the last justice born outside the U.S. was Felix Frankfurter, who was appointed to the court by President Roosevelt in 1939. Frankfurter was born in 1882 in Vienna, Austria.

Asked today about the timetable for a Supreme Court nomination, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "It's not going to happen this week."

Speculation has been rife about President Obama's choice to succeed retiring Associate Justice David Souter, who announced his decision last week. Much of the punditry has been focused on whether Obama will name a woman to the court. There is no shortage of suggested names, but we won't list them here because we are in the middle of running our "name the nominee and you can win a Nixon bumper sticker" contest. But many signs are pointing to its being a woman.

In the lead-up to its passage by Congress in 1919 and ratification by the states in 1920, proponents of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution carried signs and wore buttons that read, "Votes for Women." If a woman is named to replace Souter, she will be the third. Which brings us to the subject of "Votes Against Women" -- the dissenting Senate votes against the two female justices who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sandra Day O'Connor (nominated by Reagan; confirmed by Senate 99-0 on 9/21/81).

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (nominated by Clinton; confirmed by Senate 96-3 on 8/3/93). Voting no: (3 Republicans) -- Helms (NC), Nickles (OK), Smith (NH).

And while this may be a case of apples and oranges, there have been a total of two African-Americans nominated to the court in history, and both received far more negative votes. Thurgood Marshall, nominated by President Johnson in 1967, had 11 senators voting against him (and an additional 20 abstaining from voting altogether). Clarence Thomas, the choice of the first President Bush in 1991, barely squeaked by on a 52-48 vote.

Trivia: Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) is the only senator to vote against both Marshall and Thomas.

President Obama, in a surprise visit to the White House briefing room as press secretary Robert Gibbs was, well, briefing the press, confirmed what everyone had already known: that Supreme Court Justice David Souter will leave at the end of June, when the current term concludes.

The president said he was "incredibly grateful" for Souter's service, praising the 69-year old justice as "fair minded" and "independent," and said he was known for his "integrity, equanimity and compassion."

Obama said he would consult with members of both parties, across the political spectrum, in deciding on a successor. He said that he hoped to have a new justice sworn in by the first Monday in October -- when the new court term begins.

Initially, it was the left that had reservations about a Justice Souter.

It seems pretty hard to believe now, but back in 1990, when President George Bush nominated David Souter to be an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, it was the left that was most apprehensive and the right that was excited, happily so.

The president's nomination was a "home run," gushed then-White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. Conservatives were thrilled. The end to legal abortion was in the foreseeable future, both sides thought.

And when the Senate confirmed Souter on Oct. 2 that year, by an overwhelming 90-9 tally, the opposition came from liberals: Brock Adams (WA), Daniel Akaka (HI), Bill Bradley (NJ), Quentin Burdick (ND), Alan Cranston (CA), Ted Kennedy (MA), John Kerry (MA), Frank Lautenberg (NJ) and Barbara Mikulski (MD).

But between his votes on affirming the Roe decision on abortion and dissenting in the Bush v. Gore case in 2000, Souter became a reliable liberal vote on the court.

His departure, whenever it comes, is not likely to alter the ideological makeup of the court. In fact, he may even be succeeded by someone with even more progressive credentials. Tops on the list appear to be Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal appeals court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Wood.

National Public Radio's Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg is reporting that Supreme Court Justice David Souter has told the White House that he plans to retire at the end of the court's current term, at the end of June. He is expected to remain on the bench until a successor is named.

Souter, 69, has long made it clear that he was looking to retire. The decision would give President Obama his first appointment to the high court and, Totenberg says, "most observers expect that he will appoint a woman."

The court currently has one female justice -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is recovering from cancer surgery.

But don't look for any ideological change on the court. Although Souter was appointed by the first President Bush, he "generally votes with the more liberal members of the court, a group of four that is in a rather consistent minority."