WASHINGTON — Elena Kagan declined to discuss her passions, demurred when asked anything that might tip her hand on the Supreme Court and invoked her right to remain inscrutable even on cases buried in the past.
In short, Kagan did her best to ensure her high court nomination hearing was just the kind of benign event she criticized years ago for lacking “seriousness and substance.”
Here we go again. We are now going through plenty of blunders in opening statements by the Senators. From Republican Tom Coburn’s statement about our “Constitutional Democracy” to Schumer and Feinstein showing that they do NOT KNOW the Constitution, or “…don’t care about it in instances like this.” Continue reading “Elena Kagan confirmation hearing.” »
WASHINGTON — A study from a liberal interest group says the Supreme Court of Chief Justice John Roberts has a decidedly pro-business tilt, echoing the line Democrats are taking in support of the nomination of Elena Kagan to fill its latest vacancy.
The analysis from the Constitutional Accountability Center finds that the court’s five conservative justices side with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at least two-thirds of the time, while the four liberal justices all disagree with the position by the nation’s largest business group more than half the time.
Red flags went up, for me, during the speech in which Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Not only did he say she was his friend, in her speech she indicated, “During the last year as I have served as Solicitor General, my longstanding appreciation for the Supreme Court’s role in our constitutional democracy has become ever deeper and richer.” I presume that she was marked incorrect in law school for her answer concerning Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution.
I still have not found the word democracy anywhere in the Constitution. I have, however, found a document where it is deeply and richly reverenced. Along with unions, health care plans, welfare, social security, rent on property to pay for public schools and the like. Continue reading “A very unconstitutional Elena Kagan is emerging.” »
In a letter to Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee Republican, Robert Bauer, counsel to Obama, implied the president may use executive privilege to hide some memos Elena Kagan wrote when she served in the Clinton White House.
“President Obama does not intend to assert executive privilege over any of the documents requested by the Committee,” Bauer writes.
President Obama’s nomination this week of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court has had little impact so far on voters’ opinions of the high court – or the president’s views of it.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows 37% give the Supreme Court good or excellent ratings, up just two points from last month.
Only 15% say the Supreme Court is doing a poor job, down seven points since April.
Forty-four percent (44%) of voters say justices nominated by President Obama will be too liberal, showing virtually no change over the past five months. Forty percent (40%) say his nominees will be about right, while only six percent (6%) say they will be too conservative.
Good morning from The Oval. It’s Selection Monday at the White House, as President Obama nominates Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the nation’s 112th Supreme Court justice.
Kagan, who would be the fourth woman to serve on the high court, is a “highly credentialed lawyer who has spent her career in the corridors of legal power,” writes Joan Biskupic of USA TODAY.
If the Senate confirms Kagan, the court would for the first time have three sitting female justices. Kagan would also be the first non-judge on the court since Nixon appointees William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell took the judicial oath in 1972.
Asked if he would consider nominating a judge to the Supreme Court who does not support abortion rights, President Obama said today that, like presidents before him, he is not applying a “litmus test” on that or any issue.
But he went on to say that he wants “somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women’s rights. And that’s going to be something that is very important to me.”
“Part of what our core Constitutional values promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity, and women are not exempt from that,” the president added. He said he is “somebody who believes that women should have the ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies and issues of reproduction.”
President Barack Obama has had face-to-face interviews with at least two leading Supreme Court candidates, as he steps up his search for a successor to Justice John Paul Stevens.
The president has met with two federal appeals-court judges, Merrick Garland of Washington, D.C., and Sidney Thomas of Montana, a senior administration official said Friday.
The hour-long meeting with Judge Thomas was Thursday, the official said; the one with Judge Garland took place earlier in April. Vice President Joe Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, met with both men in recent days as well, another official said.
The president is expected to announce his choice of a nominee before May 26—the date last year when he nominated now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the bench—in hopes that he or she is confirmed by the Senate’s August recess.
Merrick Brian Garland is an Article III federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He joined the court in 1997 after being nominated by President Bill Clinton. Garland is one of three leading contenders for nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States since the April 2010 retirement announcement of Justice John Paul Stevens.—Judgepedia
Sidney Runyan Thomas is a Federal Appeals Judge with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit based in San Francisco. He joined the court in 1996 after being nominated by President Bill Clinton.—Judgepedia
Senate Republicans will have a chance this week to directly confront President Obama on his vision for reshaping the nation’s courts.
The president is scheduled to meet Wednesday with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to discuss who should fill the seat of Justice John Paul Stevens, who has announced his plans to retire at the end of the Supreme Court’s current term. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will also attend the meeting.
Republicans have threatened to filibuster any nominee who they view as a “judicial activist.” And some Democrats are offering their own advice to Obama, arguing that the president should tap a nominee who is not currently in the judiciary because every member of the current court was once a federal appeals court judge. Leahy has emphasized the importance of going outside “the judicial monastery.”
Former president Bill Clinton said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that “some of the best justices in the Supreme Court in history have been non-judges.”
WASHINGTON — Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the former Harvard Law School dean who is a leading candidate on President Obama’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees, is facing opposition from some pockets of the political left because of her past statements on executive power and detentions, as well as her warm welcome by some conservatives.
Kagan enjoys broad support from a range of scholars and legal specialists. But some academics and activists are raising concerns that, if confirmed to replace Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, she would be inclined to compromise with conservatives and pull the Supreme Court further to the right.
With Obama sorting through about 10 potential nominees — including Kagan’s friend, the current Harvard Law School dean, Martha Minow — it is too early to gauge how Kagan’s chances of getting picked are being affected. But the complaints have grown loud enough that the White House, while declining to comment publicly, has begun providing background information to reporters in a bid to bolster her against charges from the left.
THE RUMORS have been swirling for months, but Justice John Paul Stevens’s retirement announcement Friday drives home the reality that come October, for the first time in some 35 years, he will not emerge through the velvet curtains to take his place on the Supreme Court dais. It is a natural and inevitable evolution: the soon-to-be 90-year-old justice stepping aside, paving the way for a young president to anoint a new legal luminary to tackle the great questions of the day. It is a moment rich with possibilities but also one that warrants contemplation of the life of a man who for decades wielded enormous power with grace and dignity.
Born in 1920 to a wealthy Chicago family, Justice Stevens saw his family’s fortune decimated by the Great Depression, and he viscerally experienced the power of the government as his father was charged with, convicted of and later cleared of embezzlement. He served his country in World War II as a code breaker, and, later, after attending law school with the help of the G.I. Bill, he donned a different uniform and took up work as a judge and justice.
He served under seven presidents and three chief justices, along the way melding passion and intellect with a gentlemanly approach most associated with generations gone by. Even in his later years on the bench, his passion was in full and civil display, as he decried the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics and struck down the death penalty for juveniles and the mentally retarded.
WASHINGTON — The preservation of abortion rights, protection of consumer rights and limits on the death penalty are due in no small measure to John Paul Stevens’ actions on the Supreme Court.
He’d tell lawyers gently, “Let me ask a stupid question,” then subject them to an intellectual grilling en route to decisions touching many aspects of American life. The justice prodded the government to take global warming more seriously, and he stood for campaign-finance controls in an imperfect world in which he acknowledged, “Money, like water, will always find an outlet.”
Stevens said Friday he’s retiring in the summer. That sets up a struggle over his replacement that is likely to be far more contentious than the process 35 years ago that placed him on the high court.
The man who became the court’s leading liberal was nominated by a Republican president, Gerald Ford, and confirmed 98-0 by the Senate, a consensus almost unimaginable in this partisan, ideologically driven era.
Stevens’ influence waned and waxed over the decades, reaching its height after other liberals retired in the early 1990s. For a dozen years after, the justice in the bow tie proved adept at drawing votes from Republican appointees Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy to frustrate Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s conservative agenda of promoting states’ rights and the death penalty.
The battle over the next Supreme Court justice is already under way, as the No. 2 Republican in the Senate on Sunday would not rule out blocking a successor to Justice John Paul Stevens — who said in interviews published this weekend his retirement is on the horizon.
The battle over the next Supreme Court justice is already under way, as the No. 2 Republican in the Senate on Sunday would not rule out blocking a successor to Justice John Paul Stevens — who said in interviews published this weekend his retirement is on the horizon.
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” warned President Obama not to try nominating anyone “overly ideological” to replace Stevens, who is known as the leader of the liberal wing of the court.
He suggested the party did not want anyone so outspoken as Sonia Sotomayor, who was picked to replace former Justice David Souter last year, and said the decision on whether the GOP will filibuster will “all depend” on who the next nominee is.
“I think the president will nominate a qualified person. I hope, however, he does not nominate an overly ideological person. That will be the test,” Kyl said. “And if he doesn’t nominate someone who is overly ideological, I don’t think — you may see Republicans voting against the nominee, but I don’t think you’ll see them engage in a filibuster.”
The McDonald v. Chicago case is a very interesting twist of legal mumbo-jumbo to try to take away your Second Amendment rights. It centers around the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment does not “incorporate” the Second Amendment to the States. Of course we know that the Constitution did that. A study of this subject would necessitate one to review the Fourteenth Amendment.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.—Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1
Reading that last clause of this amendment brings up an interesting point. Since the health care legislation does not apply to Congressmen and their staffs and the President, should it apply to me? Is that equal protection of the law?
They have given themselves different tax rates. Is that equal protection of the law?
They are exempt from depending on the Social Security system in their waning years. Is that equal protection of the law?
One might wonder just what equal protection of the law the Fourteenth amendment provides.
May 22, 2012 1813 Richard Wagner 1931 Kenny Ball 1950 Bernie Taupin 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1938 Susan Strasberg 1959 Morrissey 1907 Lord Laurence Olivier 1946 George Best 1970 Naomi Campbell
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