Supreme Court retirements

[Mark Tushnet]

In addition to the comments from Garrett Epps and Steve Wermeil responding to Richard Friedman, I'd suggest enumerating the "truly voluntary" retirements in the modern era (I don't know enough about pre-Roosevelt Court stuff).  Off the top of my head they are:  White, Stewart, Powell, Burger, Goldberg, Minton, Clark, Burton, Reed, and Warren.  I don't know enough about Minton and Burton (particularly the state of their health).  But the overall pattern is pretty strong, though not universal:  justices appointed by a president from party A who retire voluntarily do so when another president from party A is in office.  In light of reports about the state of the justices' health, a betting person would say the odds are that a President Gore would have no more than a single appointment (and that one predicated on the thought that Justice Stevens might have "shifted his party allegiance," a thought undermined somewhat by  the timing of Justice White's retirement ― he had "shifted" his judicial voting behavior, but retired when [indeed, nearly as soon as] a Democrat took office and he was "old enough"), and that a President Bush would have between one and three appointments.

Mark Tushnet
Georgetown University Law Center
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