Obama Sets Deadline for Supreme Court Pick

In response to a question about abortion rights, President Barack Obama said today that the Constitution protects women's "privacy and their bodily integrity" and that he wants a Supreme Court nominee who will interpret the Constitution to account for women's rights.

Obama also said he wants to choose a nominee within the next month.

The president spoke briefly with White House reporters before a meeting with four Senate leaders to discuss potential successors to Justice John Paul Stevens. He took one question, and a reporter asked whether he would be willing to nominate someone who opposes abortion rights.

Obama replied by reiterating his own support for abortion rights and by disavowing “litmus tests around any of these issues,” according to a White House transcript.

“But,” he added, “I will say that I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women’s rights. And that’s going to be something that’s very important to me, because I think part of what our core Constitution — constitutional values promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity, and women are not exempt from that.”

Obama said he hopes to name his choice before May 26, the day that he named Justice Sonia Sotomayor as a nominee last year. “We are certainly going to meet that deadline, and we hope maybe we can accelerate it a little bit so that we have some additional time,” he said.

Click here for video of Obama's remarks today, via C-SPAN.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Obama has begun speaking with potential nominees, though the newspaper said that the conversations are not final interviews.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who attended the White House meeting, released a statement praising the process that Obama is using to select Stevens' successor.

"This President has taken seriously the advice and consent role of the United States Senate in appointing judges to the federal judiciary," Leahy said. "I hope that all Senators will resist hasty reactions driven by the special interests on either the right or the left. I hope that each Senator will instead fulfill his or her constitutional responsibility to fairly consider and evaluate the nominee."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, released a joint statement saying a justice should have an open mind and not be a "rubberstamp."

“When the President selects a nominee," they said, "Senate Republicans will review that nominee’s record diligently and respectfully with the goal of ensuring that the American people can be confident that the nominee will be able to fulfill the judicial oath, which is to ‘faithfully and impartially’ administer justice ‘without respect to persons.’"

Comments

[Student]

I willingly acquiesce in the institutions of my country, perfect or imperfect; and think it a duty to leave their modifications to those who are to live under them, and are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.

–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Hampden Pleasants, 1824.

[bill]

My concer is whomever the President appoints , they be able to interpret the constitution as it was written by and for americans and get away from the nonsense of trying to interpret it thru the eyes of european nations.
our founding fathers established our nation to get away from european tryanny and to have religous freedoms and the laws established based on the bible.....

[Tom M.]

To bt and Don: with respect, the President amended his sentence by saying that our constitutional values "promote the notion" of personal privacy and bodily integrity.
However, even if he had not qualified his sentence in that way, we must remember that what the constitution says is not for you or I or President Obama to decide, but for the Court to decide. The Supreme Court majority, in Roe v. Wade, were the ones who professed this right to personal and bodily privacy, and it is to this Supreme Court precedent (not to the President) that we look to know the extent of that right. One can talk about what was written explicitly till he's blue in the face, but that constitutional horse left the barn in 1973.

[Don]

I agree with BT and totally disagree with MJ... a woman does NOT have the right to her "bodily integrity" when it involves another human life. You have the right to decide if you want to get pregnant or not, but if you do get pregnant, the Constitution does not give you the right to kill that human that is living within you. Your rights end at the beginning of another human's rights. I will support your privacy until it involves an innocent human life.. otherwise known as a baby.

[MJ Smith]

What enlightened (read intelligent) reading of the Constitution would not derive inherent rights to privacy and bodily integrity? Constitution aside, my right to determine what happens inside my body--including the disposition of developing life--is in no way the State's purview.

[bt1911]

"President Barack Obama said today that the Constitution protects women's "privacy and their bodily integrity" and that he wants a Supreme Court nominee who will interpret the Constitution to account for women's rights."

Interesting. My copy of the constitution states that women have the right to vote, not that their, or anyone's, "privacy" and "bodily integrity" is to be protected. I must have the obsolete, pre-January 20, 2009, version.