Re: Chief Justice
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Why is Chief Justice a bid deal? My understanding is that the only additional power the chief justice has is routine administrative stuff for the court. This actually seems like it would reduce a justice's time available to write opinions, etc.
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Not quite. The Chief also gets to decide who writes the opinion when he is in the majority. This can be useful, and close observers have suspected that Rhenquist has a couple of times voted against his preference in order to assign himself an opinion.
That having been said, you are basically right -- Chief is more symbolic/administrative than anything else. That's why I would love to see Scalia get the nomination.
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