There are a couple of good behind-the-scenes articles today on how the White House, Congress, and outside groups are prepared to react in the event of a Supreme Court retirement and subsequent nomination of a new justice. One conservative group, the Committee for Justice, “plans to feed research to conservative bloggers so they can fact-check and counter opponents’ claims,” according to the Washington Post. I was struck by the reference to bloggers – at the time of the last nomination, in 1994, the Web barely registered in our culture. The next nomination will be the first of the Internet Age.

Anyway, a retirement seems increasingly unlikely this year, especially given Justice Thomas’s remark yesterday that the Court’s recent term ended as “winds of controversy swirled about the Court’s decisions and, unfortunately, about the imagined resignations.” I’ve been annoyed by the media’s breathless speculations, both this week and two years ago, over non-existent retirements. And it would be sad if someone retired now, when the Court is achingly close to breaking the record of the longest period of time without a change in membership. The current record is just over 11 years, from February 3, 1812 (the arrival of Joseph Story) to March 18, 1823 (the death of Henry Brockholst Livingston). Since Stephen Breyer joined the Court on August 3, 1994, the record would presumably be broken around September 15, 2005. The new term doesn’t begin until the first Monday in October, so theoretically Rehnquist or O’Connor could announce his/her retirement now, I guess, but not make it effective until the second half of September. But that seems to me like cheating.

Meanwhile, poor Justice Breyer has been the junior justice for 11 years. That’s 11 years of answering the door. He must be sick of it. If anyone’s looking forward to a new justice, it would be him.