In light of two controversial 5-4 Supreme Court decisions this week, Matt is reminded of Jeffrey Toobin's point that "In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned,...
Supreme Court
I mentioned in my initial post about Caperton that it was a classic example of Scalia's showy rhetoric concealing substantive points of highly dubious quality. To unpack this a bit,.
In a pleasantly surprising decision, the Supreme Court today held 5-4 (along predictable ideological lines with Kennedy as the swing vote) that West Virginia judge Brent Benjamin violated the due.
She's so radical that her opinion on the incorporation of the 2nd Amendment against state governments matches well-known Trotskyite Frank Easterbrook! I would add a few caveats: 1)I agree with Volokh that the opinion should have done a better job at least of addressing the...
Stuart Taylor, on a Republican nominee:Alito's critics have similarly ignored much evidence that his 15 years of steady, scholarly, precedent-respecting work as a judge tell us more about him than.
I'll be writing later this week about whether judicial appointments are ideologically predictable. But I find this assertion from Randy Barnett Barret rather problematic:Everyone knows it's all over but the.
Eugene Volokh expresses concern about the consequences of having an actual liberal on the Supreme Court:And she might move that seat further to the left, if she proves to be a solid liberal, like Justices Brennan and Marshall, as opposed to a moderate liberal, like...
Jan Crawford Greenburg convincingly speculates that Diane Wood should be considered the frontrunner to be Obama's first Supreme Court nominee. Given the current candidates -- i.e. given that Karlan doesn't.
Writing with respect to Ed Gillespie's preemptive defense of Republican hypocrisy over judicial appointments, Johnathan Adler comments:I understand this view, even as I lament it. I continue to believe the.
I'll have more about the Toobin article on John Roberts later. But the bottom-line quote -- "The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society" -- applies quite forcefully (as...
The Supremes issued another decision today. Liptak:A Pakistani Muslim man who was arrested after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks may not sue John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert.
With respect to Sonia Sotomayor's comments about diversity and judging, Kerry Howley makes two accurate points: 1)they are entirely innocuous, and 2)will be inevitable misrepresented by Senate Republicans if she.