So word on the street is a justice will be retiring after this session at the latest, but it might happen as soon as….well, any day. The other juicy details are that it’s not who you think.

So let’s spin the DC gossip wheel some more. Who will replace said mystery justice once they leave the highest court?

Is this our next Supreme Court justice?
Is this our next Supreme Court justice?

This is where it gets good, sounds like Obama wants to nominate Cass Sunstein. The intense egghead from Harvard Law who just wrote the fascinating behavior economics book Nudge.

Why this is interesting: He is young, in justice years (only 54). So the Dems will have a seat for a long time, supposing he really is a liberal. He is a professor, Obama was a legal professor so this shouldn’t be surprising, but it means he won’t be coming from the typical federal court background…so he might have a more academic approach.

Most importantly, he doesn’t believe in Adam Smith’s idea of the rational actor. That’s what Nudge is about. He promotes a political philosophy he coined called libertarian paternalism. He writes that government should “help you make the choices you would make for yourself—if only you had the strength of will and the sharpness of mind. But unlike ‘hard’ paternalists, who ban some things and mandate others, the softer kind aims only to skew your decisions, without infringing greatly on your freedom of choice.”

So basically, he could be a total loose cannon…exciting!!!