He credited the Warren court with ending segregation and opening doors for African Americans. "The court had to step in and break that logjam. I'm not sure you need that. In fact, I would be troubled if you had that same kind of activism in circumstances today," he said.
Since Richard Nixon's election in 1968, Republican presidents have named 12 of 14 justices to the high court. Yet the court has never become solidly conservative -- though a victory by John McCain might have provided an opening to secure a majority on the right by replacing the older liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, 88, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75.
President Clinton named the only two Democrats to the court since the 1960s, and he steered away from strong liberals, instead choosing veteran appeals court judges with moderate to liberal records. Ginsburg, soft-spoken and measured, is a champion of women's rights. Stephen G. Breyer is a pragmatic problem-solver. Neither has been in a position to shape the court's work.
By contrast, Warren, Marshall and Brennan were leaders of the court in its liberal era. They pressed for civil rights for minorities and women and strengthened rights for criminal defendants. Brennan and Marshall led the court in halting the death penalty for a time in the early 1970s and in striking down laws banning abortion.
The Republican appointees of Presidents Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush put a halt to the liberal activism of the Brennan and Marshall era.
Because of Obama's background, he is unlikely to rely heavily on advisors to select candidates for the high court.
"The lawyer who will have the most influence on court appointments in the Obama administration will be Barack Obama," said Walter Dellinger, a Washington lawyer who represented the Clinton administration before the high court. "He was a highly regarded professor of constitutional law at Chicago, which has one of the most intellectually intense law faculties in this country."
A Harvard Law School graduate, Obama taught for 12 years at the University of Chicago and led classes on voting rights and equal protection of the law. In the Detroit interview, he praised Justices Breyer and David H. Souter, a Republican appointee, as "very sensible judges. They take a look at the facts and they try to figure out: How does the Constitution apply to these facts? They believe in fidelity to the text of the Constitution, but they also think you have to look at what is going on around you and not just ignore real life.
