33rd / 424th District Courts

This could make a huge change on the Court. At our recent annual judicial conference we had a wonderful analysis of this by Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, noted constitutional law scholar and media commentator on legal issues who is the Alston & Bird Professor of Law at Duke Law School. He does an awesome talk on current constitutional issues and is able to talk about every case one ever heard of and not only analyze the decision but explain precisely why each justice voted as they did and trace backward through other cases that predicted how the justice would vote. It was an amazing hour and a half with no notes at all!

About the next President and the Supreme Court. There is a good current article available online, A Crucial But Largely Ignored 2004 Campaign Issue:
The Next President Is Likely to Appoint At Least Three Supreme Court Justices
By JOHN W. DEAN. (Source: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040924.html).
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There's not been a vacancy on the Court since 1994. Dean predicts 3 replacements, as did Prof. Chemerinsky. Chief Justice Rehnquist is 80 and is about to have the longest tenure of any C.J. and Chemerinsky believes that when he has that goal made the C.J. will retire. Justice John Paul Stevens is 84 and has to be close to retirement, statistically speaking. Justices O'Connor and Ginsberg have each had bouts with cancer and Chemerinsky says Justice O'Connor would like to retire due to the poor health of her husband. Her departure from the Court could make things interesting since she is most often the swing in 5-4 decisions.

Should be interesting to watch.