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US Supreme Court Tag

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, adding...

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 8th...

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 the...

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 23 Comments

The stupid meme of the day is that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was "rude" to Obama during the State of the Union address because Alito grimaced and mouthed the words "not true" when Obama stoked the crowd with a lie about a recent 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 and...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 21, 2010 13 Comments

Barack Obama reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down parts of McCain-Feingold campaign contribution restrictions:With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory...

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. detention...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 11, 2009 1 Comment

As reported by AP:John J. O'Connor III, the husband of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, has died.The court said that O'Connor, 79, died Wednesday in Phoenix, Ariz., of complications arising from Alzheimer's disease.John O'Connor, himself a lawyer, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's nearly two...

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 be...

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 Sotomayor's...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 15, 2009 4 Comments

At Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, Sotomayor was asked by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to explain her comment that "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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 11, 2009 6 Comments

Frank Ricci was the lead plaintiff in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Sonia Sotomayor on the issue of whether the City of New Haven discriminated against mostly white firefighters. The Supreme Court decision, as well as Sotomayor's handling...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 01, 2009 6 Comments

I don't think confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee should turn on public polling. Nonetheless, when the public polls favored Sonia Sotomayor, supporters of Sotomayor argued for the relevance of these polls, arguing that "that Obama apparently found the American political center in appointing her."Then...

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 New...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 14, 2009 2 Comments

The Blog of Legal Times (BLT) is reporting that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated recently that she expected Sonia Sotomayor to be confirmed, and that Sotomayor would be a welcomed and qualified addition to the Court. BLT noted that such commentary by...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 09, 2009 1 Comment

In today's New York Times, columnist David Brooks has a novel theory of why Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's Latina identity has worked its way into Sotomayor's speeches, if not her judicial decisions: Blame it on the 1970's.No, seriously. According to Brooks, Sotomayor had bad...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 03, 2009 10 Comments

The White House explanation for Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 "wise Latina" statement was that Sotomayor used a "poor" choice of words and certainly would "restate" the language. This spin made no sense, as the full text of the 2001 speech made clear that Sotomayor did not...

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