The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is urging President Obama to renominate some of his predecessor's appellate court picks as "a sign of bipartisanship." Conservative activists have been hoping that President Obama would make that gesture as a peace offering in the long-running partisan battle over appellate court nominations.

Specter pointedly reminded Obama that "throughout your campaign, you promised change and pledged to strive for bipartisanship in your administration."

President Obama's nominee for Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, is perhaps best known on Capitol Hill as a Clinton administration nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the D.C. Circuit whom Senate Republicans bottled up in 1999.

So it's interesting that Kagan now has been endorsed by none other than Miguel A. Estrada, a Bush administration nominee to the D.C. Circuit whom Democrats filibustered a few years ago, partly in retaliation for what Democrats saw as GOP mistreatment of Kagan and other Clinton judicial nominees.

You wouldn't think Estrada was inclined to do any favors for Democrats. But it turns out that he and Kagan have known each other ever since they were both eager young Harvard Law students.

Federal judges better not get their hopes up about the prospects for a pay raise in 2009.

Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of both the House Appropriations and Judiciary Committees, predicted Tuesday that it might be even tougher this year than it was in 2008 to get lawmakers to agree to authorize a cost-of-living (COLA) bump in judges' salaries, given the steadily worsening economy.

"It's a more difficult environment," said Schiff, who also co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on the Judicial Branch, which started with the aim of improving relations between Congress and the courts.

A raft of former government officials, military brass and judges weighed in at the Supreme Court Wednesday, on a case that;promises to provide the first clues about the Obama administration's detainee policies.

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director William Sessions;were among those who signed on to friend-of-the-court briefs in Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, opposing the position that President George W. Bush had taken in the case.

The case originated as a test of Bush's position that the authorization for the use of force Congress passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks authorized him to arrest and indefinitely detain people -- in this case Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri,a Qatari citizen who was lawfully residing in Peoria, Illinois -- suspected of being involved in terrorism.