Top News

• "When President Obama talks about the traits he admires in a Supreme Court justice, he ticks the predictable boxes -- intellect, integrity, respect for the Constitution and the law. And sometimes he talks about Lilly Ledbetter and the quality he defines as empathy," the Washington Post reports.

• "Georgia Republicans Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson both have nothing but nice things to say about Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears," CQ's Legal Beat reports. "But when it comes to Sears as a U.S. Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice David H. Souter... both men are reserving judgment."

• "The best way for" Obama "to engineer a Senate confirmation vote on his pick for the Supreme Court before the August recess would be to reveal his choice sooner rather than later," CQ's Legal Beat also reports.

• "Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an influential member of the Judiciary Committee, wants" Obama "to consider two Hispanic judges from California," Politico reports.

• "Sen. Jeff Sessions is settling in as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking difficult questions" Tuesday "of two nominees at his first confirmation hearing in his new role," the the Legal Times blog reports.

• Gallup reports on its new polling that shows 64 percent of "Americans say it doesn't matter to them whether Obama appoints a woman, with slightly higher percentages saying the same about the appointment of a black or Hispanic."

• AP reports that rumored nominees Judges Diane Wood and Ann Claire Williams will be in the spotlight at a hearing today in Chicago over "alleged religious discrimination."

• The Chicago Sun-Times examines U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo's chances of being nominated.

Commentary

• "It would be no stretch for Obama -- as it would have been no stretch for" President Bush -- to find a nominee who happens to be both fully qualified and in possession of two X chromosomes," Ruth Marcus maintains.

• Writing at CBSNews.com, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., says he wants "a Justice who will make decisions based on the law and the Constitution. Politics and ideological agendas have no place on the nation's highest court, or anywhere in our federal judiciary."

• In the Washington Post, Sessions lays out the "tough, substantive questions" he wants senators to ask of Obama's nominee.

• "When selecting a Supreme Court nominee, White House officials essentially plot the prospects out on a graph," explains ABC News' Jan Crawford Greenburg. "On the x-axis, you measure how closely the nominee fits with what you want in a justice; on the y-axis, you measure how easily the nominee could be confirmed."

• Obama "doesn't need to pick Hillary Clinton for the Supreme Court, as some have suggested, but he probably does have to pick a woman -- and Hillary Clinton is part of the reason," Josh Gerstein says.

• Lawyer Shahid Buttar's story on HuffingtonPost.com "examines the timing and context of Souter's retirement, suggests criteria for his replacement, and identifies Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm as the potential nominees most suited to this historical moment."