I'm not a big Luttig fan, but I'd never accuse him of being a lightweight.

Charges of intellectual mediocrity of a sitting federal judge should be based on that judge’s voluminous record of published writings, not on his college grades. And the accusations of cronyism better come from something other than an anonymous comment on a blogs' equivalent of the National Enquirer. IMHO, of course.

I agree with both of these comments. I probably should not have linked that comment, but I was interested in whether these were likely to become issues if Luttig were nominated. I hadn't heard anyone saying such things about Luttig, so I was a bit surprised by it. Anyway, like Kate, I believe he should be evaluated based on his record as a judge, not his record as a law student.

No one, I think, could justly say that Luttig is lacking in intellectual horsepower. However, if last week's Tax Notes Today article on the oral argument in Black & Decker is even remotely accurate, one can justifiably be concerned about his objectivity and bench deportment.

Regardless of what one thinks about the relative merits of the parties' positions in Black & Decker (for the record, I think the Government has the better of both the 357 and economic substance arguments, but had a mush-brained and ultimately disastrous litigation strategy), it cannot be encouraging when a judge who is supposedly short-listed for the Supreme Court shows up for oral argument having made up his mind about the case and proceeds to simply berate counsel for the side he thinks should lose.