Jeff Rosen profiles Supreme Court short-lister Judge Diane Wood, and it’s very favorable. (It also relies more on named sources than his profile of Judge Sotomayor.) His bottom line: “Her combination of moderate liberalism and a judicious temperament would make her a worthy successor to David Souter.”
For what it’s worth, I’ve long thought Judge Wood is the obvious choice. As I told Marcia Coyle:
She has a wide range of experience, including substantial government service; she has the intellectual heft to go toe-to-toe with the Court’s conservatives; she is reliably liberal on the issues the administration and its base are likely to be most focused on (including abortion); she has experience that would seem to satisfy the president’s concern for empathy, including being a working mother while on the faculty at the University of Chicago when they did not have maternity leave.
On a related note, Judge Wood is in Washington today.