May 4, 2009

Press accounts often characterize Justice David Souter as simply one of the Court's liberal voices. That may be true on some issues, but on questions of restraining the overuse of litigation (as also on, say, many criminal law issues) Souter has been much more of a centrist. He deserves high applause, for example, for his authorship of one of the most important Court opinions on litigation reform in many years, the 2007 Bell Atlantic v. Twombly case tightening pleading standards and thus curbing many "fishing expedition" suits. It is grounds for real worry that a replacement named by President Obama might have very different views on these subjects. Robert Alt has more at the New York Post, as does Hans Bader at OpenMarket, and the WSJ law blog interviews Evan Tager of Mayer Brown.