A criminal law perspective on Janice Rogers Brown

The folks over at The Volokh Conspirary, starting with Orin Kerr here and followed up by Todd Zywicki here, are talking up the possibility of Janice Rogers Brown as President Bush's next Supreme Court nominee, and they suggest she may be relatively liberal on questions of criminal law and procedure. (She is reputed to be extraordinarily conservative on other issues).  In addition to generating interesting comments at Volokh, this new Brown buzz has drawn Brown admiration from Mike at Crime & Federalism, who says she "would be a perfect Justice," and from Ken at CrimLaw, who suggests she would be the only Justice who "believes in the 4th Amendment."

Because I have not had a chance to review personally her record as a Justice on the California Supreme Court, I have no first-hand opinion about Janice Rogers Brown as a potential SCOTUS nominee.  But I find the buzz and its criminal law focus interesting, and it gets me wondering how a Justice Brown might fit into the current SCOTUS sentencing head-count on Apprendi-Blakely issues.  (In this context, however, it should be noted that Brown joined the California Supreme Court opinion in Black which somehow held that California's sentencing scheme was unaffected by Blakely.)