Okay. Most of you know the drill. Sit still, look at the camera, smile, and shut up. Kennedy, shut up! He doesn't want to hear you! Sonia, can you smile, please? Clarence, don't slouch. Geez. (Every year… the same thing….) Can someone go see where Ruth is? Didn't she know… oh, hi there, hun. Didn't see you back there. My … Read More
Supreme Court Cases I’m Following: At A Glance
Hearing date Case Summary Where did the case come from? Government position My position My prediction for outcome 9/9/2009 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Whether to overrule precedents upholding state and federal limits on corporate political spending. D.C. Circuit No No Yes 10/6/2009 U.S. v. Stevens Can the government criminalize selling dogfight videotapes or other depictions of animal cruelty? … Read More
Should The Supreme Court Stay The Execution Of An Innocent Man?
Yes, right? Well, maybe not. Here's the story of the Troy Davis case: Twenty years ago, a late-night scuffle broke out in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah. When Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, tried to intervene, someone pulled a gun and killed the officer. Soon after, Sylvester "Red" Coles, came to the police with a lawyer, accusing … Read More
Sotomayor Hearings
I don't know why this is even an event. She's going to get asked questions, but she knows what the questions will be, and she has a good answer for every one of them. They're not going to catch her in a "gotcha". They know that; she knows that; everybody knows that. I mean, what's going to happen? Is she … Read More
SCOTUS Wonkery
Ignore the New York Times article which (somewhat misleadingly) headlines that SCOTUS shifted to the right this term. While it's true, and also true that Kennedy (the swing vote) sided with "the right" more often than note, the "swing to the right" itself was negligible and doesn't mean anything. That's because roughly 80 cases on diverse topics decided by nine … Read More
Ricci Case Overturned
The US Supreme Court overturned the Second Circuit in the Ricci case, aka the "white firefighters case", this morning. The court held that it was wrong for the Town of New Haven to deny promotions to white firefighters after it appeared that the firefighters' exam was racially biased. The outcome was 5-4 along predictable lines: Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and … Read More
SCOTUS Rules On Strip-Searching Case
One of the few cases I was following this year on the Supreme Court docket was Safford United School District v. Redding, a case out of Arizona where a 13 year old girl was search-stripped by school officials because of a "tip" that she had some ibuprofin. (She didn't, as it turned out). I sketched the full details out in … Read More
Dumping Waste Into Clean Water Doesn’t Violate The Clean Water Act
SCOTUS ruling today: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Clean Water Act does not prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from allowing mining waste to be dumped into rivers, streams and other waters. In a 6-to-3 decision that drew fierce criticism from environmentalists, the court said the Corps of Engineers had the authority to grant Coeur Alaska Inc., a … Read More
Pat Buchanan On Sotomayor
In Human Events: Having lost the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, Republicans are looking to redefine themselves for a nation that still leans conservative but is less Republican that it has been in decades. "Leans conservative" based on….? The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court presents just such an opportunity. For, even … Read More
Punditry Of The Day
The Corner's Victor Davis Hanson: A disinterested observer would conclude that Justice Sotomayor is race-obsessed. In her now much quoted 2001 UC Berkeley speech she invoked “Latina/Latino” no less than 38 times, in addition to a variety of other racial-identifying synonyms. When one reads the speech over, the obsession with race become almost overwhelming, and I think the public has … Read More
The Caperton Case
The opinion (PDF) handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court today in the case of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. et al sounds like a no-brainer, yet the court split 5-4 on ideological lines (Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Scalia dissented). The question was simple: Is it unconstitutional for a state supreme court justice to sit on a case which involves the … Read More
Goldstein’s Sotomayor Analysis Complete
I referenced this before: Over at SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein notes all proverbial ink being spilled over Sotomayor's race, along with the implicit and explicit statements that her supposed bias will prevent her from judicating equally and fairly. So he decided to do something novel… read her decisions. Goldstein is done with his analysis, and the results should put to rest any claim … Read More
Tom Goldstein Reviews Sotomayor’s Decisions
Over at SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein notes all proverbial ink being spilled over Sotomayor's race, along with the implicit and explicit statements that her supposed bias will prevent her from judicating equally and fairly. So he decided to do something novel: It seems to me that there is an infinitely simpler and more accurate way of figuring out whether Judge Sotomayor decides cases … Read More
Ending This Once And For All
Rich Tucker at Townhall, saying succinctily what many on the right are saying about Sonia Sotomayor: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said back then. Oh? She seems to be saying a person’s … Read More