O'Connor's Rightful Heir?

Last week I posted a story from Slate predicting that Justice Anthony Kennedy would emerge as "the new Sandra Day O'Connor" - a.k.a. the "moderate swing vote" on the Court.

Now, Newsweek has decided to get involved in the "Isn't Tony dreamy?" lovefest:

O'Connor's Rightful Heir?

Kennedy may check the Supreme Court's tilt toward the right.

Jan. 30, 2006 issue - When conservative Washington lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court talk about "the Greenhouse Effect," they don't mean global warming. The Greenhouse in question is Linda Greenhouse, the longtime and esteemed Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times. The "effect" is to subtly push Supreme Court justices to the left. Unless a jurist comes to the court with very strongly held, or even fixed, conservative views, there is a tendency to be seduced by the liberal legal establishment that dominates at elite law schools like Harvard and Yale. Those schools produce a disproportionate number of the law clerks who generally draft opinions for the justices, as well as the sort of professor routinely tapped as a source by Greenhouse, who is regarded as a legal scholar in her own right.

That, at least, is the view of conservatives like U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman, who popularized the term some years ago. The chief "victim" of the Greenhouse Effect is usually said to be Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has drifted to the left since his appointment almost two decades ago. With the departure of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor from the Supreme Court, Kennedy is seen by liberals and status-quo devotees as the remaining swing vote, a check on the court's rightward tilt as more justices are appointed by Republican presidents.

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Kennedy has "evolved," say the liberals — much like other GOP-appointed justices before him, such as the late Harry Blackmun. Conservative lawyers scoff (though rarely on the record, lest they have to argue before Kennedy) that the justice is squishy and vainglorious, too worried about what the headlines will say about him.

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