In a stunning, carefully crafted 136-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker held in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that California’s Proposition 8, which outlaws same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional. The lawsuit was filed by two gay couples who sought to overturn Prop 8. Interestingly, the named defendant, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, did not defend Prop 8. Neither… Read more »
After President Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, he made a statement that implied she would follow in the footsteps of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights giant and first black Supreme Court justice. Kagan served as a law clerk for Marshall shortly after she graduated from Harvard Law School. Specifically, Obama said… Read more »
President Barack Obama has chosen Elena Kagan to fill the vacancy left by Justice John Paul Stevens’ retirement. Sadly, Kagan cannot fill Justice Stevens’ mighty shoes. As the Rehnquist court continued to eviscerate the right of the people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens filed principled and courageous… Read more »
On Wednesday, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned a ruling made by a federal trial judge that would have allowed limited television coverage of a trial that will decide the fate of California’s Proposition 8. The trial, which is currently proceeding in San Francisco, is one of the most significant civil rights cases… Read more »
New York–In the wake of President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) encourages a reasoned analysis of Sotomayor’s candidacy. Critics are focusing on accusations of judicial activism and identity politics rather than engaging in sound examination of her legal qualifications. Comments of this nature… Read more »
Since the Bush administration began transporting men and boys to Guantánamo Bay in January 2002, it has tried to prevent them from presenting their cases before a neutral federal judge. Indeed, the naval base was turned into a prison camp precisely to keep the detainees away from impartial courts. The government argued that federal courts… Read more »
Institute for Public Accuracy915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org___________________________________________________ Wednesday, October 29, 2008 What About Constitutional Powers? Two Views MARJORIE COHN, Libertad48@san.rr.com, http://www.marjoriecohn.comCohn is the president of the National Lawyers Guild, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the author of “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has… Read more »
To bolster his argument that the Guantánamo detainees should be denied the right to prove their innocence in federal courts, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush: “At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantánamo have returned to the battlefield.” It turns out that statement is false. According to… Read more »
The National Lawyers Guild calls on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself from any case coming before the Supreme Court involving the constitutionality of torture as an interrogation technique. In a BBC interview that aired on Tuesday, Scalia defended the use of torture to extract information from persons in custody by law enforcement… Read more »
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in Boumediene v. Bush. Most of the 34 detainees whose fate hangs in the balance in this case were brought to Guantánamo after being picked up by bounty hunters or tribesmen in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet the Bush administration has fought hard to keep them away from… Read more »