As candidate, Obama called for justice with 'empathy'

WASHINGTON (CNN) - While the White House has given no indication of who might be tapped to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter, comments President Obama gave as a candidate offer a sense of what Obama may look for.

Candidate Obama said selecting a supreme court justice would be "one of the most consequential decisions" of the next president, and added that "Roe vs. Wade probably hangs in the balance."

He discussed the issue when speaking to a Planned Parenthood convention in July 2007. "We need somebody who's got the heart - the empathy - to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old," he said. "And that's the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges."

At a CNN Democratic presidential debate in November of that year, Obama said, "I taught constitutional law for 10 years, and when you look at what makes a great Supreme Court justice, it's not just the particular issue and how they ruled. But it's their conception of the court. And part of the role of the court is that it is going to protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process, the outsider, the minority, those who are vulnerable, and those who don't have a lot of clout."

He added, "Sometimes we're only looking at academics or people who've been in the courts. If we can find people who have life experience, and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that's the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court."