The Con Law Professor We Elected

Jodi Kantor helps flesh out what President Obama evidently means when he says he'll be looking for a Supreme Court nominee who evinces empathy and a respect for the rule of law:

Former students and colleagues describe Mr. Obama as a minimalist (skeptical of court-led efforts at social change) and a structuralist (interested in how the law metes out power in society). And more than anything else, he is a pragmatist who urged those around him to be more keenly attuned to the real-life impact of decisions. This may be his distinguishing quality as a legal thinker: an unwillingness to deal in abstraction, a constant desire to know how court decisions affect people’s lives.