"It's easy to underestimate how much difference David Souter's analytical prowess and historical command have made within the Court over the past 19 years in shaping both the language of other justice's opinions and on occasion their votes in important lines of cases. Elena Kagan seems to be uniquely suited to perform that task, and to perform it for the next thirty years or longer. Dianne Wood—who is more powerful intellectually than Sonia Sotomayor or any of the others mentioned as plausible prospects... with the sole exception of Kagan, who is even smarter—would be likely to serve nearly a decade less than Elena and doesn't appear... to have the dynamic personality or the extraordinary diplomatic gifts for inspiring confidence and for moving others that have made Elena Kagan the best dean of any major law school in memory and certainly the best Harvard dean in the forty years I have spent on the faculty here."