end of the stanford court

So, what everybody expected to happen has happened: Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist is dead. With the recent retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, this Labor Day marks the end of the Stanford Court.

Graduate of the Class of '52, attending Stanford courtesy of the G.I. Bill, it's no wonder that Rehnquist was a conservative. Stanford — the university whose only Presidential alumnus said during his 1928 election campaign, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land" — is now, and has been for most of its history, relatively conservative. There was a brief interlude from 1980 to 1991, commonly known as the "Kennedy era", during which a yacht-buying Professor of Biology turned the University into a top-notch liberal arts college as well as a world-class engineering and science research institution. With the decline in its Humanities and Social Science departments ever since a certain gap-toothed, stilletto-wearing PoliSci Professor became Provost, Stanford is well on its way to reverting to its traditional role as a foil for MIT and CalTech, and a sort of USC-of-the-north for Palo Alto High School graduates.

No one doubts that Bush will replace Rehnquist and O'Connor with the most conservative lawyers he can slip past Congress. Of interest, though, is when lawyers from the Kennedy Era will hit the Court. Rehnquist hit the Court in '71, 19 years after his graduation from Law School; O'Connor had to wait another decade. So the Kennedy-era grads should hit the Court sometime between 2002 and 2020. Since Rehnquist and O'Connor voted Bush into office in the 2000 election, those grads will get a late start, but there's still plenty of time. God forbid we ever see the day when Clarence Thomas is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

P.S. But what about Breyer? Stanford undergrad, Harvard Law. I guess that makes him moderately conservative. Thoughts welcome.