A What?

If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, it warms my heart, in a small way, to see Justice Stevens declare that “I can see myself as a conservative, to tell you the truth, a judicial conservative.” (H/t) Stevens is best described as a quirky maverick liberal who became, over time, a more doctrinaire liberal. Which is in some ways unsurprising – Justices naturally tend to change at least their tone based on the rest of the Court, and Stevens came to be the leader of the liberal wing, as Justice Blackmun was before him and after Justice Brennan retired, and just as Rehnquist was more measured as Chief Justice than as the lone dissenting conservative. A prediction: Justice Alito won’t really come into his own as a distinctive voice on the Court until after Justice Scalia is gone.