Larry Tribe is the smartest man alive

When Justice Souter retired, Larry Tribe, the famous Harvard law professor, wrote a letter to President Obama (his former student) urging him to nominate Elena Kagan.  The letter has now been leaked to Ed Whelan.  It is a very interesting letter.  One aspect that struck me was Tribe's apparent confidence that he could easily judge the relative intelligence of the front-runners. 

• On Sonia Sotomayor, the eventual nominee:  "Bluntly put, she's not as smart as she thinks she is."
• On Judge Diane Wood:  "More powerful intellectually than Sonia Sotomayor or any of the others mentioned as plausible prospects at the moment with the sole exception of Kagan, who is even smarter."

I guess when you're a professor at Harvard law school you get pretty confident in your ability to separate the brilliant from the merely very smart.  But, boy, what an ego!