Howard Bashman links to this William Kristol post saying that Justice O’Connor, and not the Chief Justice, will retire. Not only does this sound plausible to me given what I’ve heard, it is also consistent with this May 27 post at Blue Mass Group. When I read that, I thought, the logical reason for O’Connor to hire fewer clerks is because she, not Rehnquist, is planning retirement.
In any case, an O’Connor retirement would have even more implications for election law than the implications I recently flagged because O’Connor is a swing vote on even more election law cases than Rehnquist.
I imagine we will know by next Thursday about all of this speculation.