A preview of O’Connor’s replacement?

A quick tour of my side-bar links already has me overwhelmed by all the SCOTUS buzz, especially over at The Supreme Court Nomination Blog, TalkLeft and How Appealing.  Though I have lots of broader thoughts, I will try in this space to stay on-topic by providing a sentencing perspective on the new Justice talk (as in my posts here and here).

In that vein, I noticed that the SCONo Blog has this post discussing four persons named as possible replacements for Justice O’Connor, and two members of that group — Fifth Circuit Judges Edith Clement and Edith Jones — just happen to be together on a sentencing opinion released today in US v. Garcia-Rodriguez, No. 03-40906 (5th Cir. June 30, 2005) (available here).  The opinion in Garcia-Rodriguez, which was authored by Judge Jones, turns on the application of plain error and does not break any important ground.  But, while everyone is busy speculating, I cannot resist wondering what Judges Clement and Jones might really think about a range of sentencing issues.