J. Harvie Wilkinson for the Supreme Court

George Will has an excellent piece today laying out the case for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson for the chief justiceship. Judge Wilkinson was until recently the chief judge of the reliably conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Overcoming my instinctual bias against someone named "J. Harvie" I can think of no person more qualified to be the Chief. If merit---integrity, legal acumen, and judicial temperament---was the sole criteria, it would be Judge Wilkinson, hands down.

But then again merit hasn't been the sole criteria since Hoover appointed Benjamin Cardozo.

Conservatives who are hoping against hope for the reincarnation of Cotton Mather, or of the intellectual heir of Willis van Dervanter, can forget about it. But those who've replaced the old concern with geographic balance with the real estate of ideology---ie that some seats are the "moderate" seats in much the same way there was a "southern" seat and a "Massachusetts" seat for a long time---should also not double down their bets.

COMPLETELY RANDOM SUPREME COURT GEEK FUN!
At the magnificent Oyez website that Jerry Goldman runs out of Northwestern, on the pages for the individual Supreme Court justices it has a feature that lets you see who the previous occupants of that seat were. Interestingly enough, O'Connor occupies Owen Roberts' seat, he of the famous vote switch from the New Deal era.

I'm such a nerd for that type of stuff.