Enlarge imageBy Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will announce on Tuesday his first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, putting his stamp on the closely divided court and igniting what could be a partisan clash over its ideological direction for decades to come.
"The president has made a decision and will be announcing his nominee to the Supreme Court this evening at nine o’clock (0100 GMT)," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. Bush, with the nominee at his side, will make the announcement from the White House.
His remarks will run about seven minutes.
The quicker-than-expected decision on a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor could help the White House deflect attention from a growing controversy over the role of Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, in leaking a covert CIA operative’s identity, Republican strategists said.
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Interest groups on the political right and left have been gearing up for years for a fight over a Supreme Court vacancy. Senate confirmation hearings are likely to begin in September, with the court to open its next session in October.
Republicans said nominating a woman -- or someone who is black or Hispanic -- might help Bush avoid a bitter battle.
A leading female candidate was Edith Hollan Jones, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans.
Attention focused just before the announcement on Judge John Roberts Jr., who joined the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in May 2003 after a protracted confirmation fight.
U.S. appeals court Judge Edith Clement had emerged earlier in the day as one of the leading candidates, according to Republican sources. But sources said a White House official called her to inform her that Bush had chosen someone else.
WOMEN AND MINORITIES
Other possibilities included Judges Janice Rogers Brown, who is black, and Priscilla Owen, who is white -- both recently approved by the Senate for appeals court seats after a bitter fight with Democrats.
Also in the running: J. Michael Luttig, a judge, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is Hispanic.
At a news conference with the Australian prime minister, Bush was noncommittal about whether he would choose a woman as advocated by his wife, Laura Bush.
"I have thought about a variety of people, people from different walks of life, some of whom I’ve known before, some of whom I had never met before," Bush said.
"I do have an obligation to think about people from different backgrounds but who share the same philosophy -- people who will not legislate from the bench," he added.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will first consider the nomination, complained that White House consultations with Democrats fell short of previous administrations.
"There has been some reaching to Democrats but certainly not to the extent we saw during the Reagan administration or the Clinton administration," he said.
"Consultation must be more than a one-way street," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Republicans had said Bush was leaning toward picking a woman to replace O’Connor, the first woman on the high court and a moderate conservative who often controlled the outcome on issues like abortion, affirmative action and civil liberties.
Conservatives urged Bush to use the vacancy to push the court further to the right.
Moderate Republicans urged him to choose someone who could assume O’Connor’s role as a swing vote between the nine-member court’s conservative and liberal wings.
The selection could test the recent bipartisan compromise that kept alive Democrats’ ability to block controversial judicial nominations, but only under "extraordinary circumstances."
This nomination is unlikely to be Bush’s last.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist is 80 and battling cancer, although he took the unusual step of issuing a statement saying he will continue at the court "as long as my health permits."
