In less than two years as president, Donald Trump has already put two radical right-wing justices on the Supreme Court, cementing a conservative majority on the Court for decades. He has also placed 29 right-wing judges on the federal circuit courts of appeals with more in the works by the end of the year. These… Read more »
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has nothing but contempt for international law. But he has shown uncritical deference to executive power, particularly in the so-called war on terror cases.
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 »
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 »
After the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited opinion, upholding habeas corpus rights for the Guantánamo detainees, I was invited to appear on The O’Reilly Factor with guest host Laura Ingraham. Although she is a lawyer and former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, Ingraham has no use for our judicial branch of government, noting… Read more »
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee began its confirmation hearings on the nomination of Samuel Alito for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Alito is no John Roberts. Whereas Roberts had barely been a judge for two years when Bush nominated him for the Supreme Court, Alito has authored 361 opinions during his 15-year tenure on… Read more »
In 1960, California Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown agonized about whether to grant clemency to death row inmate Caryl Chessman. Brown’s refusal to commute Chessman’s sentence haunted him for the rest of his life. He reversed 23 death judgments in the last 7 years of his term. Ronald Reagan, who defeated Brown in the 1966… Read more »
On the day we honored Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, George W. Bush appointed a white male to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. Evidently unable to find a woman or Latino sufficiently “qualified” to sit on the high court, Bush reached deep into the trough of right-wing federal judges… Read more »
Bush has nominated his Texas crony as a stealth appointment to the Supreme Court. Although the Senate will be hard-pressed to discover Harriet Miers’s positions on the critical issues, she does have a long record of loyalty to Bush, whom she calls “the most brilliant man I ever met.” Bush undoubtedly knows where she stands… Read more »
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings have ended and the jig is up. Although Roberts characterized his judicial role as merely an “umpire,” he consistently played hide the ball about his views during the questioning. Nevertheless, Roberts’ disingenuousness came through in spite of his evasions. And the senators have enough information about Roberts’ record to know… Read more »