  In this paper we consider steady vortex flows for the incompressible Euler
equations in a planar bounded domain. By solving a variational problem for the
vorticity, we construct steady double vortex patches with opposite signs
concentrating at a strict local minimum point of the Kirchhoff-Routh function
with $k=2$. Moreover, we show that such steady solutions are in fact local
maximizers of the kinetic energy among isovortical patches, which correlates
stability to uniqueness.
