• "President Barack Obama began interviewing potential Supreme Court candidates Tuesday, while a senior White House official defended the president's stated preference for a nominee who will give the powerless 'a fair shake,'" the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "Obama would enjoy at least one advantage should he wait until Congress' Memorial Day recess next week to announce his Supreme Court nominee," CQ's Legal Beat reports. "Republican senators likely to take the lead in responding will be scattered around the country -- and say they don't necessarily have plans to rush back to Washington if a nominee is announced."

• "Abortion has re-emerged as a hot issue, and if history is any indication, it will get even hotter when" Obama "makes his Supreme Court nomination," NationalJournal.com reports.

• The Washington Post reports that Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., is expected to discuss the process of replacing Justice David Souter at the American Law Institute's annual meeting today at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel.

• If Obama "were to nominate former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to the Supreme Court, it would become his third big gift to the state's Republicans," the Arizona Republic reports.

• Massachusetts "Gov. Deval Patrick cozied up to" Obama "in a highly anticipated Washington, D.C., meeting yesterday, but Obama aides weren't saying whether the talk turned to an open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court," the Boston Herald reports.

• As Obama "continues his secretive vetting of potential SCOTUS nominees, legal scholars and media observers are throwing out even more possibilities," NationalJournal.com reports.

Commentary after the jump

Commentary

• In the Washington Post, former Bush adviser Ed Gillespie argues that the protocol for voting on a nominee changed from the time Senate Republicans largely went for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to the time Democrats largely opposed John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

• "The liberal legal community may dislike the use of the term" judicial activism, "but perhaps the term stings them because it is so aptly applied," the New Ledger's Pejman Yousefzadeh argues.

• Should Obama's "nominee have an empathy that leads her... to side reflexively with plaintiffs in most civil litigation against corporations, the Supreme Court's laudable efforts to stem the most egregious abuses of legal process could be turned back," the Manhattan Institute's James R. Copland fears in the Washington Examiner.

• At SCOTUSblog, Kevin Russell, partner at Howe & Russell, examines some of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's opinions that don't "involve resolution of controversial or momentous legal questions" but "rather give some insight into the judge's day-to-day work on cases of some factual or other interest."

• The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin profiles Roberts.

• Ed Whelan criticizes Solicitor General (and SCOTUS short-lister) Elena Kagan for her rulings and stance on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military.

• At the Balkinzation blog, the Constitutional Accountability Center's David Gans discusses the Voting Rights Act, the Souter vacancy and the future of the Supreme Court.