WASHINGTON -- It may not loom as large for voters as Iraq or the economy, but the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court -- and how it rules on everything from abortion to the treatment of suspected terrorists to whether schoolchildren can be asked to pledge their allegiance to "one nation under God" -- could depend on who is elected president in November.

		Graphic: Supreme Court begins new term Oct. 4

The campaigns and most ardent supporters of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry are keenly aware that three members of the court -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 79, and Justices John Paul Stevens, 84, and Sandra Day O'Connor, 74 -- are widely expected to step down during the next presidential term. The names of possible Bush or Kerry appointees already are circulating in legal circles, and there is virtually no overlap between the lists.

That isn't surprising, given hints from the candidates about what they would look for in a Supreme Court justice. Bush aims to appoint judges at all levels "who will strictly interpret the Constitution and will not use the bench to write social policy." Kerry has promised not to name anyone whose vote might undo the right to abortion.

In some ways, however, the two talent pools are similar: Both are dominated by men and women with elite educations and either judicial experience or distinguished careers as appellate advocates. Several potential candidates served in their youth as law clerks at the Supreme Court, as did three of the current justices. Most are young enough to have an abiding influence on the law if they are appointed to the court.

The stakes are high. The liberal interest group People for the American Way points out that several decisions in the court's 2003-2004 term were decided by 5-4 or 6-3 votes, including rulings that allowed suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo the right to challenge their confinement; that blocked enforcement of a law designed to protect children from online pornography; that allowed individuals to sue state governments for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act; and that left the door open to lawsuits challenging the partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts.

The court also is likely at some point to take up a federal law that prohibits certain abortions. In June, a San Francisco federal judge ruled that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act is an unconstitutional infringement of a woman's right to have an abortion. The Bush administration appealed that ruling last week to a federal appeals court.

Presidents often make surprising appointments to the high court, however, and legal observers caution that choices often depend on the political conditions of the moment, including the partisan balance in the Senate and the ethnicity, gender or ideology of the justice being replaced.

President Bush

Because Bush has been in office for almost four years, the names on his supposed short list are well known and so is his praise for the court's two most conservative members, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Noting that those two justices were in the minority in several closely divided rulings, People for the American Way Vice President and Legal Director Elliot Mincberg recently said, "There is no question that Americans' rights and legal protections would have fared far worse with one or two more justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the court."

But if the president's praise for Scalia and Thomas alarms liberals, conservatives see it as a hopeful sign that Bush will choose justices who will interpret the Constitution on the basis of its text and original meaning, not their own political preferences.

"Liberals believe that there is no difference between what legislators do and what judges do," said Todd F. Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. As a result, Gaziano said, they are skeptical that Bush nominees with conservative political views will be able to put them aside when they ascend the bench.

But Gaziano said Bush's intention is to look for judges with a "restrained judicial philosophy" rather than a political agenda.

David M. O'Brien, a government professor at the University of Virginia and author of "Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics," expects Bush to look for justices in the Scalia mold.

"In general what he's going to look for is the most conservative Court of Appeals judge out there who is young," O'Brien said. "Those are the top two priorities. Then you can add on a sort of symbolism -- woman, Asian, Hispanic -- and then, fourth, depending on the balance in the Senate, the issue of confirmability will arise. But Bush is going to be willing, I suspect, if he has the opportunity, to fight a battle where [Bill] Clinton ran on the confirmability issue. It would be a very strategic move, and also in keeping with George W.'s style and mannerisms. He doesn't follow his father; he looks to [Ronald] Reagan."

If Bush decided to make what one Supreme Court advocate called an "aggressive" nomination, he might choose J. Michael Luttig, 50, a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, regarded as one of the most conservative of appeals courts. Luttig, who was born in Texas, served as a law clerk for the late Chief Justice Warren Burger and for Scalia when Scalia was an appeals court judge. Luttig held several Justice Department positions in the first Bush administration.

Luttig also would bring to the court personal experience with a contentious legal issue recently in the news: whether teenagers who commit murder should be sentenced to death. Luttig's father was murdered by a 17-year-old who was executed in 2002.

Another aggressive choice for Bush would be fellow Texan Judge Edith Jones of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Jones, 55, was a runner-up when the elder Bush appointed David H. Souter to the top court in 1990, a choice that conservatives now see as a blunder because of Souter's migration to the court's liberal wing.

A third appeals court judge often mentioned as a possible Bush appointee is Samuel A. Alito Jr., 54, of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A former Justice Department official and U.S. attorney in Newark, Alito has been nicknamed "Scalito" because of the affinity of his views to those of Scalia. Like Scalia, Alito is sympathetic to First Amendment free speech claims. He was the author of a recent 3rd Circuit decision striking down a Pennsylvania law barring paid advertisements for alcohol in college newspapers.

If Bush wanted to name a Hispanic appellate court judge, he might pick Emilio Garza, 56, of San Antonio, also on the 5th Circuit.

Other appellate judges admired by conservatives include John G. Roberts Jr., 49, of the District of Columbia Circuit, a former Rehnquist law clerk and frequent Supreme Court advocate who served in the Solicitor General's Office during the elder Bush's administration, and J. Harvie Wilkinson III, 59, a colleague of Luttig's on the 4th Circuit, a former professor and newspaper editor and a clerk for the late Justice Lewis Powell, a fellow Virginian.

Although at least one analysis of the two judges' votes placed Wilkinson to Luttig's right, some conservatives consider the courtly Wilkinson less than a true believer. "Luttig has a better chance than Wilkinson," O'Brien said. "Wilkinson is too old, and the people in the Federalist Society [an influential group of conservative and libertarian lawyers and law students] are just beating Wilkinson to death."

Not all potential Bush nominees are sitting judges. Bush is likely to give serious consideration to two of his own lawyers: Theodore B. Olson, 63, who recently stepped down as U.S. solicitor general, and White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, 48, a former justice on the Texas Supreme Court.

O'Brien said Olson, who argued for the Bush campaign before the Supreme Court in the dispute over the 2000 Florida election, is the leading candidate for a Bush nomination outside the federal judiciary. Gonzales, although distrusted by those conservatives who gripe that "Gonzales is Spanish for Souter," has close ties to Bush and if named to the next vacancy would be the first Hispanic on the court.

If Rehnquist were to step down, and if Bush could nominate his replacement as chief justice, conservatives have just the man in Scalia. Noting that the Senate confirmed Reagan's nomination of then-Associate Justice Rehnquist to be chief justice in 1986, O'Brien said: "We learned then that it's impossible to defeat a sitting Supreme Court justice, and at that time Democrats controlled the Senate. If Bush were to nominate Scalia as chief justice, it would be Reaganesque."

Sen. John F. Kerry

Speculation about whom Kerry might appoint to the court is based less on intelligence about his personal preferences than on his general philosophy and the pool of experienced jurists nominated by President Bill Clinton.

Another factor may be the extent of Kerry's willingness to withstand opposition from Republican senators outraged over the decision by Democratic senators to block a handful of conservative Bush judicial nominees.

"I don't think judicial appointments are on Kerry's horizon yet," O'Brien said, but he predicted that "like Clinton, Kerry is not going to put a lot of the eggs in the judicial basket. He's going to be looking for confirmability and that demands someone who has a record of a moderate, centrist kind."

Several federal appeals court judges are mentioned as possible Kerry choices. Perhaps the most high-profile is Judge Merrick B. Garland, 51, a former law clerk to the legendary liberal Justice William Brennan who was appointed by Clinton to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which produced three current Supreme Court justices. Garland is regarded as a cerebral centrist and wins praise from lawyers across the philosophical spectrum. Like several possible Bush choices, he served in the Justice Department.

Another young appeals court judge with strong Democratic connections is Robert A. Katzmann, 51, a former professor of law and public policy at Georgetown University who was appointed by Clinton in 1999 to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Katzmann, who holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard and a law degree from Yale, is a former special counsel to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York.

Other appeals court judges likely to be considered by Kerry are David Tatel, 62, Garland's colleague on the D.C. Circuit whose blindness has not prevented him from achieving distinction on the bench; Jose Cabranes, 63, a native of Puerto Rico and former counsel to Yale University who is a judge on the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Sonia Sotomayor, 50, also a 2nd Circuit judge and active in Puerto Rican and other Hispanic legal organizations; and Diane Wood, 54, a former law clerk for the late Justice Harry Blackmun who was appointed by Clinton to the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

If Kerry wanted to name a Hispanic justice and bypass the federal appeals courts, he could elevate U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan of Miami. Born in Cuba in 1961, Jordan is a former law clerk for O'Connor. He was appointed to the bench by Clinton in 1999.

Kerry could look outside the federal judiciary, in which case he might consider former U.S. Solicitor General Seth Waxman, former acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger or Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan.

Waxman, 52, along with potential Bush nominee Olson, successfully defended the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law before the high court. Kagan, 44, a law clerk for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, was named by Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the nomination died in the Senate. Dellinger, 63, is a longtime law professor at Duke University who might face resistance from Senate Republicans because of his role in opposing the 1987 Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork.

Although most of the speculation about Kerry's choices focuses on sitting judges and prominent advocates, one student of Supreme Court history suggested the Massachusetts Democrat might revert to the once-common practice of choosing a political figure for the court, which so often must rule on the decisions of other branches of government.

"An intriguing possibility is that Kerry would break from the recent model of choosing an appellate judge and, not for the first time, take a page from the playbook of John F. Kennedy by picking someone from public life," said Harry Litman, a regular Supreme Court practitioner and former clerk to two justices at the court.

"Kennedy opted for Byron White -- a football hero and top prosecutor -- and if President Kerry were thinking along these lines, his short list could include such names as [Rep.] Richard A. Gephardt [of Missouri] and [former Maryland Lt. Gov.] Kathleen Kennedy Townsend."

Litman, a former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, is Pennsylvania state counsel for the Kerry campaign, but noted he was not speaking on behalf of the campaign.

Other observers question whether any president -- or the Senate -- will want to return to the days of politician-justices. "Federal law at the Supreme Court level is very complex," said the Heritage Foundation's Gaziano. "The demands of the Supreme Court call for experienced jurists with a fair degree of experience with federal law."

O'Brien concurs, but offers different reasons. "The intensity of politics in judicial appointments is much higher than it used to be," he said, "and you have 25 years of reaching out to lower court appellate judges, so that there is now an expectation that Supreme Court nominees should have some judicial experience."