Sayonara, Souter. No big loss -- or is it?

Nothing personal, but from a political point of view, David Souter's imminent retirement does not change the philosophical balance of the Supreme Court. He was a consistent liberal, even though he was placed on the court by Bush 41. We conservatives have John Sununu, Souter's fellow New Hampshirite (is that a word?), to thank for having given us almost 20 years of liberal Souterian jurisprudence. What an enormously wasted opportunity.

As disgruntling as it may be to admit, the justice for whose health conservatives must devoutly pray is Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote. And I certainly hope Nino Scalia is eating plenty of lean meats and vegetables these days.

So, a pair of great gifts for Obama this week: a filibuster-busting Senate majority, and now a Supreme Court seat to fill. Sigh.

UPDATE: Ed Whelan discusses why from a conservative point of view, as bad as Souter was, his replacement is likely to be much worse (and, don't forget, will likely serve on the court for decades, possibly becoming the hinge of a future enduring liberal majority). Here's an excerpt:

Souter has been a terrible justice, but you can expect Obama's nominee to be even worse. The Left is clamoring for "liberal lions" who will redefine the Constitution as a left-wing goodies bag. Consider some of their leading contenders, like Harold Koh (champion of judicial transnationalism and transgenderism), Massaschusetts governor Deval Patrick (a racialist extremist and judicial supremacist), and Cass Sunstein (advocate of judicial invention of a "second Bill of Rights" on welfare, employment, and other Nanny State mandates). Or Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor, whose shenanigans in trying to bury the firefighters' claims in Ricci v. DeStefano triggered an extraordinary dissent by fellow Clinton appointee José Cabranes (and the Supreme Court's pending review of the ruling). Or Elena Kagan, who led the law schools' opposition to military recruitment on their campuses, who used remarkably extreme rhetoric--"a profound wrong" and "a moral injustice of the first order"--to condemn the federal law on gays in the military that was approved in 1993 by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Clinton, and who received 31 votes against her confirmation as Solicitor General. Or Seventh Circuit judge Diane Wood, a fervent activist whose extreme opinions in an abortion case managed to elicit successive 8-1 and 9-0 slapdowns by the Supreme Court.

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