2. Who Will Replace Justice Corelli?

[Daily Examiner, 11 June]

"Who Will Replace Justice Corelli?

The President may have remained silent last night as to who he might appoint to the Supreme Court in place of Justice Corelli. Others have not been quite so reticent.

Italian American leaders are already suggesting that Corelli should be replaced from within his own community. (Corelli's lineage is Italian, though his father originally hails from French-owned Corsica). Their claim is considered strong but there are other powerful constituencies within the President's party who will want the President to choose Corelli's successor from among them.

Women continue to be under-represented at all levels of the federal judiciary and the National Women's Sodality was already calling last night for another female justice to join the Supreme Court bench.

Native Americans may consider that they have the best claim of all: this was their land first, yet no Native American has ever served on the nation's highest court.

African-American leaders have long voiced dissatisfaction that there continues to be a solitary African-American on the Supreme Court and have called for another African-American to be appointed.

Gay Americans maintain that their struggle for equal rights would be immeasurably advanced by the appointment of the first openly gay member of the Supreme Court in that body's history.

Even America's WASP community might be considered to have a claim. Though long the dominant force on the Supreme Court bench, in recent years that dominance has markedly declined. Indeed the present Supreme Court is comprised of six Roman Catholics, two Jewish members and only one justice who might be described as a WASP. In exclusive golf and country clubs from New Hampshire to New Haven there is rumoured to be a palpable sense among the nation's pampered and privileged that with Corelli's resignation their time has come (again).

One thing is sure. While the identity of Corelli's likely successor is as yet unknown, he or she will certainly need big boots: the better to tread in the footsteps of giants."