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Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 30, 2011 15 Comments
That’s a theme in a very worthwhile article about Thomas written by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker: These tempests obscure a larger truth about Thomas: that this year has also  been, for him, a moment of triumph. In several of the most important areas...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 03, 2011 16 Comments
I find this interesting, considering that Hatch is facing a likely challenge from Jason Chaffetz, who is gaining in the polls. I like Hatch, although I’ll readily admit I have followed him mostly as relates to judicial appointments, where he fought the good fight on...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 02, 2011 28 Comments
The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 ruling (Alito dissenting), ruled in favor of the right under the First Amendment for protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church to picket near the funerals of soldiers. Here is a key piece of the Opinion, written by Chief...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 24, 2011 12 Comments
Criticism of Supreme Court Justices is nothing new.  We do it and they do it. But the latest tactic in going after two Supreme Court Justices, Scalia and Thomas, seems out of the ordinary.  Since the first of this year we have seen three charges...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 06, 2011 0 Comments
One of the deals worked out in the lame duck session was the confirmation of 19 judicial nominees without action on four controversial nominees, including Goodwin Liu and John J. “Jack” McConnell. As reported by AP (h/t Senatus): President Barack Obama on Wednesday resubmitted a batch...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 29, 2010 7 Comments
Here are Legal Insurrection’s Official predictions for 2011: Obama will give an unscripted speech announcing he is resigning to take a year-long road trip to play golf in each of the 57 states. Joe Biden, the second in line to the presidency, will become President upon Obama’s resignation,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 11, 2010 9 Comments
The NY Times laments that liberals cannot manage to get a full-throttled liberal nominee on the Court to do battle with Antonin Scalia (emphasis mine): The selection of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the nation’s 112th justice extends a quarter-century pattern in which Republican...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 10, 2010 11 Comments
Chief Justice John Roberts, in responding to a question during a law school forum, took the very reasonable position that what happened at the State of the Union address was troubling: “First of all, anybody can criticize the Supreme Court without any qualm,” he said,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 08, 2010 1 Comment
That seems to be the point of David Savage’s intellectually dishonest column in the L.A. Times. Savage tries to link Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the 2002 “torture memo” written by Thomas’ former clerk, John Yoo. Savage’s argument is that Thomas’ view of the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 29, 2010 9 Comments
Why the sudden slew of attacks on the Supreme Court, specifically Justices Alito and Roberts, by leading Democrats? The decision in the Citizens United case, which struck down on First Amendment grounds some legislative restrictions on campaign speech by corporations, is the excuse but not...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 29, 2010 16 Comments
During the State of the Union address, Barack Obama singled out the Supreme Court for ridicule on its recent campaign finance ruling, which Obama asserted could open the door for foreign campaign contributions: With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 28, 2010 13 Comments
State of the Union speeches regularly infuriate the opposing party, and to that extent Barack Obama met and exceeded expectations last night. One aspect of the speech deservedly is receiving most attention: The crude attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court in front of the Congress...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 29, 2009 9 Comments
Reports indicate that two of the planners of the attempted airplane bombing over Detroit were released Gitmo detainees, Muhamad Attik al–Harbi and Said Ali Shari. Each of these detainees went through a military hearing system and were released in 2007. At that time, the U.S....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 04, 2009 9 Comments
Like I said, with regard to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, in my prior post Yes To Sotomayor. Here’s an excerpt from reliably conservative Pat Toomey’s Op-Ed today: When John Roberts and Samuel Alito were nominated to the Supreme Court, Republicans argued that they should...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 16, 2009 29 Comments
Yes, the Senate should vote Yes on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be the next Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The main reason I reach this conclusion is that there is no compelling reason to vote no. I watched about half of...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 29, 2009 8 Comments
In a 5-4 ruling authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the ruling by Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor and two other Court of Appeals judges in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano. [Full opinion and analysis below] In Ricci, white...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 31, 2009 0 Comments
Ruth Marcus is a columnist for the Washington Post. By any standard, Marcus is left-of-center, not an Obama-basher, and not hostile to liberal causes. So when Marcus rejects the White House spin on Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” statement, it deserves attention: Nice try, Mr. President,...
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