John Paul Stevens has the longest tenure on the Supreme Court and is not coincidentally its oldest member at 89.  Speculation arises every year about his potential retirement, but until now, Stevens has seemed indefatigable — or perhaps concerned about retiring with a more conservative President in place to nominate his replacement.  However, Stevens no longer has that worry, and the small number of clerks he has hired this summer for the next session indicates that retirement will come soon:

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court’s liberals will retire next year.

If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May.

Souter’s failure to hire clerks was the first signal that he was contemplating leaving the court.

A Stevens retirement would create a new round of the battle over nominees, but it would once again put Barack Obama on home turf.  Stevens has been a reliable liberal vote, perhaps only slightly less than Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  His retirement would give the possibility of a rebalancing of the court, and Obama will have to find someone as reliably liberal to prevent that outcome.  He doesn’t have much room to gain with a new nomination, and would have to be satisfied with the status quo.

He’ll have to do better than Sonia Sotomayor, the qualified but rather unexceptional choice to replace the rather unexceptional David Souter.  Stevens has been much more of a heavyweight on the court, and his absence will leave Stephen Breyer as the leading liberal intellect on the court.  Two non-entities might make for warm bodies to fill liberal seats, but it will reflect poorly on Obama in the long term, and perhaps even in the short term.  “Doing bette” may mean having to contend with more serious Republican opposition, especially after Obama’s polling has dropped through the floor in a very short span of weeks this summer.

Once again, though, the Republicans will have few options but to focus on the shortcomings of Obama’s nominee.  Obama made that easy with Sotomayor, who got reversed and scolded by the court she joined in a high-profile case just before her confirmation hearings.  Unless the White House vetting team remains comatose through the next nominee, the GOP won’t have that kind of softball to hit.  Unless Obama nominates a moderate to replace Stevens — and his left flank will not stand for that — the GOP needs to do what it did on Sotomayor.  Don’t get caught up in filibuster threats that they can’t deliver, but focus on the nominee’s record and show where it’s out of step with the American majority, if indeed it is.

But will Stevens retire, or is Mark Sherman of the AP getting ahead of himself?  I suspect that Stevens might have retired earlier this year but for the surprise announcement from Souter.  I’d expect him to make this his last term on the court.  At Stevens’ age, he either retires soon or leaves another way, and I think most people would prefer to leave on their own terms.