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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,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 31, 2009 0 Comments
“Scott, you said that – or the President said, repeatedly, that Harriet Miers was the best person for the job. So does that mean Alito is sloppy seconds, or what?” CBS News Correspondent, John Roberts, at White House Press Briefing, questioning White House Press Secretary...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 30, 2009 4 Comments
Bruce Ackerman, a prominent constitutional law professor at Yale Law School, warned against the tactic of “stealth” Supreme Court nominations, where an ideologically driven President who seeks to change the direction of the Supreme Court nominates a relatively undistinguished appeals court judge whose lack of...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 30, 2009 4 Comments
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” So it is said. We now have reached stage three of the Sotomayor debate, because we are into statistical analysis of her opinions and dissents. First, some backdrop on statistics as relates to Supreme Court nominees. During the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 29, 2009 3 Comments
At a 2001 conference, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor uttered these now-famous words: “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.”...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 08, 2009 0 Comments
NY Times links to and quotes from my post on potential Supreme Court replacement for David Souter: William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection seems to agree that while sexual orientation may not be a big deal, previous support of gay marriage is a red flag.Elena Kagan...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 05, 2009 0 Comments
For the past several Supreme Court nominations, the hot issue has been abortion. Whether a nominee supported Roe v. Wade was the litmus test, both for conservatives and liberals. Predictably, nominees shied away from opining on whether they would vote to uphold either the outcome...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 09, 2009 7 Comments
The dispute regarding the appointment of Harold Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, to the top legal position at the State Department is heating up with the announcement that a coalition of conservative activists is beginning to form around opposition to Harold Koh, President Obama’s...
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