We at The Ninth Justice are collecting examples of memorable things that have been said in connection with Supreme Court appointments, and we hereby solicit suggestions to make our short list a bit longer.

The first category we have identified consists of comments from prospective nominees who wanted no part of the job.

Our earliest example is John Johnson, a Supreme Court litigator. According to an October 8, 1957 letter from Dean Acheson to President Truman, Johnson explained his decision to turn down President Grover Cleveland's offer of a nomination by saying: "I would rather talk to the damned fools than listen to them." (We have not yet learned exactly when this was. Cleveland was president from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.)

Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York was a bit more polite in explaining his own lack of interest when President Clinton was seriously considering him for a nomination in 1993. In an interview with the Albany Times-Union, Cuomo described how the Court looked from the perspective of a big-time political figure: "They put you in this big room. They slam this mahogany door shut. You're entombed. When the World Trade Center collapses, you can't go on television and tell people not to worry."

Clinton still wanted to add a political figure of stature and broad experience to the Court, whose members were then drawn mainly (and now entirely) from relatively cloistered federal courts of appeals. So when another vacancy came along in 1994, Clinton offered the nomination to Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

Mitchell surprised a lot of people by saying no. He cited his need to stay on as majority leader to help push the Clinton health care plan through Congress. But that may not have been his only reason, according to Newsweek. Close friends said that the 60-year-old divorcee, who also announced in 1994 that he would not seek a fourth Senate term, wanted to "live a little" and was "at heart a bon vivant" who yearned to have more of a social life, to work less, and to earn a lot of money.

Continue reading SCOTUS Flashback: Memorable Quotes

What is "judicial activism"? How about "strict constructionism"? The answers mirror the debate over the Supreme Court itself, but the short version might be: It depends.

In a National Journal cover story written days after President Bush nominated John Roberts for the court in 2005, Stuart Taylor Jr. delved into what kind of justice Roberts could be. His analysis of the terms of debate could shed some light on the coming discussion of President Obama's first nominee.

Below are excerpts from his story. Subscribers can read the full story here.

Words, words, words. What do they tell us about John Roberts, who has expressed doubt about whether a judge should "have an all-encompassing philosophy"? Or about the other people to whom such labels are affixed? How can you gauge whether Roberts is likely to be your kind of justice? Does it come down to divining his political views about the big issues? Is law, like war, simply the extension of politics by other means?

Both the importance and the difficulty of capturing in a word, a phrase, or even an entire news story the essence of any Supreme Court candidate -- especially one with as ideologically unrevealing a paper trail as Roberts's -- call to mind an aphorism of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. "The chief end of man is to form general propositions," said Holmes, but "no general proposition is worth a damn."

Generalize we must, however, whether to prognosticate about this nominee or to evaluate the Bush approach to judge-picking generally. And that involves exploring what Bush and other conservatives mean by "strict constructionism" (good) and "judicial legislating" or "judicial activism" (bad); whether they have faithfully followed their professed principles; how consistently these principles can be applied in today's world; and whether most Americans would want them consistently applied.

Rest of the story after the jump.

Continue reading Strictness, Activism And The War of Words