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Supreme Court Candidates

 
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Wed 20 May, 2009 01:34 pm
@Debra Law,
What worries me most about Roberts (and Alito) is that I can't tell any judicial principle behind their conservatism.

With Scalia, and Thomas to a lesser extent, you have at least occasional departures from the political agenda of the forces that brought them into power. And you can predict both the departures from it and most of the concurrences with it by assuming that they follow a particular, respectable set of judicial principles.

Roberts, by contrast, is sneaky. He just knocks over precedents without ever acknowledging that that's what he does, or why he does it. I remember a separate concurrence by Scalia that emanates exasperation with this practice. (Don't remember the case, though.) I'm exasperated, too. This sneaky overruling erodes the old constitutional standards without setting any new ones in their place. This is not good for the rule of law.
0 Replies
 
Debra Law
 
  1  
Reply Wed 20 May, 2009 02:34 pm
Both Roberts and Alito are weasels who serve a political agenda. Their mission is to dismantle, piece by piece, all the progress that the lowly masses (in particular, women and minorities) have achieved over the last several decades.

This article addresses Scalia's criticism of Roberts (and Alito):

Even in Agreement, Scalia Puts Roberts to Lash

Excerpt:

Quote:
It’s not every day that one Supreme Court justice, even one as rhetorically unrestrained as Justice Antonin Scalia, characterizes another justice, let alone the chief justice of the United States, as a wimp and a hypocrite.

Yet Justice Scalia did something very close to that, not once but twice, in separate opinions on Monday. As a result, he has served to lift the curtain a bit on the differences within the powerful five-justice conservative bloc that has marched in lock step through much of the term, bent on reshaping the law and, in several important areas, well on the way toward doing so.

In the campaign finance case, he accused Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of “faux judicial modesty” for writing an opinion that in Justice Scalia’s view effectively overturned the court’s 2003 campaign finance decision “without saying so.” The clear implication was that the chief justice lacked the courage or honesty to overturn the precedent openly as Justice Scalia himself would have done.

“This faux judicial restraint is judicial obfuscation,” he said.

And Justice Scalia was scathing in his criticism of an opinion signed by Chief Justice Roberts that limited, but did not completely abolish, the right of taxpayers to go to court to challenge government expenditures that promote religion. Justice Scalia would have gone on to shut the courthouse door completely, not simply limiting but overturning the precedent that the new ruling invoked.

“Minimalism is an admirable judicial trait,” Justice Scalia said, “but not when it comes at the cost of meaningless and disingenuous distinctions.”

It made no difference that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another reliable member of the conservative bloc, was the author of that opinion that Chief Justice Roberts joined. Justice Scalia was clearly taking aim at the chief justice, openly mocking his much publicized goal of lowering the court’s temperature through unanimous and jurisprudentially modest decisions....





Debra Law
 
  1  
Reply Wed 20 May, 2009 03:08 pm
Thomas: I strongly agree with David Gans" article on the Balkinization webblog:

The Voting Rights Act, the Souter Vacancy, and the Future of the Supreme Court

Quote:

The Supreme Court’s Term ends every June with a bang. Last summer’s blockbuster was District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court found, 220 years after ratification, that the Second Amendment protected an individual’s right to bear arms. Heller was widely viewed as a triumph for Justice Scalia and originalism, both because Scalia’s lengthy majority opinion was rooted in the text and history of the Second Amendment and because the equally lengthy dissent by Justice Stevens studied the same materials and disagreed only about whether text and history protected a right unconnected with service in the militia. Every justice on the Court was an originalist, at least for that one day.

What a difference a year makes. This Term’s blockbuster is most likely to be NAMUDNO v. Holder, and it is shaping up to be a repudiation of the Constitution’s text and history, and the originalist method that the Heller Court employed. With a decision expected in the midst of the search for a replacement for Justice David Souter, the Supreme Court’s decision in NAMUDNO, and its take on the Constitution’s text and history, will form the backdrop for both Obama’s nomination of a new Justice, and the hearings and debates on Obama’s nominee.

The issue in NAMUDNO is the constitutionality of one of the most important and successful provisions of the Voting Rights Act, the pre-clearance provision, most recently renewed by Congress in 2006. Upheld by the Supreme Court in 1965 and 1980, the pre-clearance provision requires certain covered jurisdictions, mostly in the South, to obtain federal permission before altering their voting laws and procedures.

Judged by the Constitution’s text and history, NAMUDNO should be an easy case. The Civil War Amendments"the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition of slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of equality and liberty, and the Fifteenth Amendment’s guarantee of the right to vote"each grant to Congress the power to enforce their guarantees by “appropriate legislation.” Written against the backdrop of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court’s ruling that helped bring on the Civil War, these Amendments were ratified to change the balance of power between the States and the federal Government and provide Congress with the tools to protect fundamental rights effectively, including the right to vote free from racial discrimination. The framers who wrote these Amendments and the American people who ratified them did not trust the states to protect fundamental rights and were more than a little suspicious of the Supreme Court, which had, after all, just announced that African Americans “had no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”

Given the text and history, whether or not Congress could have made slightly different policy choices in 2006"extending the pre-clearance provision for a shorter amount of time or applying it to fewer jurisdictions, for example"is not the question. The proper inquiry is whether Congress’ decision to extend the Voting Rights Act is within the broad discretion that the Civil War Amendments expressly gave to it.

Unfortunately, the Constitution’s text and history " so central to the conservative Heller majority " was decidedly missing in action during the recent oral argument in NAMUDNO. Rather than recognize that the Civil War Amendments give Congress a central role in enforcing liberty and equality and that congressional enactments designed to protect fundamental rights deserve substantial deference, the Court’s conservative Justices displayed marked hostility to the Voting Rights Act, refusing to give weight to Congress’ conclusion that the preclearance requirement is still necessary to deter and prevent racial discrimination in voting. Heller’s insistence that the Court follow the commands of the text and original meaning of the Constitution went unheeded. Throughout the argument, these Justices flatly ignored the text and history of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, acting as if the Court’s role was to decide whether Congress was right to renew the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial discrimination in voting, rather than to decide whether Congress' legislative solution was within its broad discretion to enact "appropriate" enforcement legislation.

Given the repeated hostile questioning by all the Court’s conservatives " except Justice Thomas who was characteristically silent " many commentators expect that the Court will strike down the extension of the pre-clearance requirement. That result would be deeply troubling, just one year after Heller’s insistence about the need for fidelity to the Constitution's text and history. Judging from the NAMUDNO oral argument, there is a real question whether the Court’s conservatives are willing to respect the Constitution’s text and history when they lead to progressive outcomes. We’ll know for certain by the end of next month.

But the conservatives weren’t the only one who oddly silent about this progressive text and history. Even after rising to the challenge in dissent in Heller, the Court’s progressive justices seemed content in NAMUDNO to debate the quantum of evidence before Congress, rather than asserting that the Court was overstepping its constitutional role.

This deafening silence should help inform President Obama’s process of selecting a nominee to replace Justice Souter, who announced his retirement days after oral argument in NAMUDNO. Obama should look for a successor to Justice Souter who can go toe-to-toe with the Court’s conservatives and call them out for refusing to follow the Constitution’s text and history when they point in progressive directions. The NAMUDNO oral argument underscored that the Supreme Court badly needs Justices who will take the Constitution’s text and history seriously, and consistently show to all Americans that the Constitution is a progressive document that supports protection of substantive fundamental rights, ensures equal treatment of all Americans, and gives the federal government broad power to enforce the Constitution’s protections. Hopefully, with the right nominee, Obama can get the Supreme Court back on the right track.

David Gans is the Director of the Constitutional Accountability Center's Human Rights, Civil Rights & Citizenship Program. He is co-author of an amicus brief filed by CAC in the NAMUDNO case and a forthcoming CAC report, The Shield of National Protection: The Text and History of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Wed 20 May, 2009 03:47 pm
@Debra Law,
Hi Debra!

This is indeed an interesting case. I thought it deserves a thread of its own, so I started one here. You are very welcome to drop in.
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Mon 25 May, 2009 08:51 pm
The New York Times has news about the Souter successor:

The New York Times wrote:
The president has narrowed his list to four, according to people close to the White House " two federal appeals judges, Sonia Sotomayor of New York and Diane P. Wood of Chicago, and two members of his administration, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

While it is possible Mr. Obama has a surprise in the works, those on this list are cut from molds similar to those of the two Clinton appointees, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. They are liberal on most issues that divide the court " and surely too liberal for many Republican senators " but have not been the outspoken leaders of the legal left that advocates crave.

Full article: "Favorites of the Left Don't Make Obama's Court List"

One of the "favorites of the left" is Pamela Karlan, who seems like an interesting jurist, judging by her description in the article. They call her "a Scalia of the left", which is high praise in my book. Can someone among you recommend characteristic opinions she has written? I'd be interested to read them.

genoves
 
  -1  
Reply Mon 25 May, 2009 10:10 pm
@Debra Law,
Debra L A W, altough highly trained in legalese, FORGOT to tell us the source of her quote. I found it. The erronous and highly left wing paragraph she quoted came out of the anus of the director of Moveon.org.
genoves
 
  -3  
Reply Mon 25 May, 2009 10:15 pm
@Thomas,
I think that Barack Hussein Obama is apparently not well grounded in read DIVERSITY. Ms. Sotomayor fills some of the criteria for appointment--a female minority but Obama seems to be dissing other groups. Certainly the President can find a lesbian disabled minority female among the many candidates out there.
0 Replies
 
genoves
 
  -3  
Reply Mon 25 May, 2009 10:25 pm
I am sure that Debra L A W does not read the Wall Street Journal. Left wing adherents to Moveon.org rarely do.

Here is a different take on the case. It will be decided very soon and I predict that Debra L AW and the leftists will be moaning and groaning when they see the result.

Debra L A W probably does not understand that the Supreme Court Decisions are the law of the land. She will have to live with the decision.


Note article from te Wall Street Journal below:

Spring is commencement season, and this year it may also mark a graduation of sorts for laws governing race relations. Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a major Voting Rights Act case which could finally acknowledge how far the country has come since the days of Jim Crow.


In Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, a Texas Utility District is challenging the constitutionality of Section Five of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The section requires the Justice Department to approve any new law or regulation on voting in nine mostly Southern states, as well as selected townships and counties elsewhere. The districts themselves bear the burden of proving that their changes won't increase discrimination.

Originally written as a five-year emergency provision to protect minority voting rights, the law was renewed in 1970, 1975, 1982 and again in 2006 for 25 more years. While Section Two of the act is permanent and is not being challenged, Section Five is outdated but still too politically dangerous to touch. In 2006, President Bush signed the extension after it passed 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate.

But politically sacrosanct doesn't mean legally justified, and at oral arguments several Justices expressed their doubts. Specifically, by making the Justice Department the arbiter for changes in some states and not others, the preclearance requirement is a discriminatory burden. "The difference between Latino registration and white registration in Texas was 18.6%," Justice Samuel Alito pointed out, "which is not good, but it's substantially lower than the rate in California, which is not covered, 37%; Colorado 28%, New Mexico 24%, the nationwide average 30%." Justice Anthony Kennedy added that "Congress has made a finding that the sovereignty of Georgia is less than the sovereign dignity of Ohio," and that it costs the covered states and cities $1 billion every decade to comply.

To hear civil rights groups, you'd think the Supreme Court was about to dismantle four decades of racial progress. Writing in the New York Daily News, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous insists that "When you examine voting patterns, it's clear not a lot has changed since 1965," citing low white turnout for Barack Obama in three Southern states. So the election of an African-American President is proof that little has changed?

But it has. According to studies by Ronald Gaddie and Charles Bullock, by 2000 most of the six Southern states covered by Section Five had a black-white gap in registration and turnout that was negligible and well below the national average. In Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina, black registration was higher than white registration, which also held in non-Section Five Arkansas and Tennessee.

As for the 2008 election, in South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Texas, Mr. Obama did better than either Al Gore or John Kerry. In both Section Five and non-Section Five Southern states, the number of black elected officials has increased dramatically since 1970 -- in 2000, Mississippi had 897, Alabama 731, and Louisiana 701.

When it was written, Section Five was an important protection for minority voters. The best compliment to the law is that its success has made it no longer necessary. We keep reading that Mr. Obama's election is a historic moment, and so it is. But then the country ought to be able to discuss -- and the Supreme Court should be able to decide -- if discriminatory laws passed to break Jim Crow are still justified.


0 Replies
 
genoves
 
  -2  
Reply Mon 25 May, 2009 10:37 pm
Anyone who thinks that Debra L A W will be angry when the case regarding voting regulations is ruled in favor of discarding unneeded strictures, she will be foaming at the mouth when the Supreme Court rules that the Firemen who passed tests in New Haven should be named as candidates who will fill the jobs listed. The case is outlined below:


Press Release Supreme Court

ADL to Supreme Court: Lower Court Wrong in Not Requiring City to Justify Race-Conscious Decision


New York, NY, February 26, 2009 …The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today filed a "friend of the Court" brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that a city must demonstrate a "compelling interest" before it can scrap a firefighter's employment promotional exam based on race.

In the case, Ricci v. DeStefano, the city of New Haven, Connecticut chose not to act on test results because it was unhappy with the racial makeup of the pool of successful candidates.

Deborah M. Lauter, ADL Civil Rights Director, said:

"ADL has long maintained that the eradication of discrimination from our society is best achieved through strict assurance of equal treatment to all and by ensuring that each person in our country has a constitutional right to be treated as an individual, rather than as simply part of a racial, ethnic, religious, or gender-defined group.

"This critical goal cannot be achieved when governments are permitted to freely use race as a basis to choose among citizens, be it for employment, the provision of education, or for qualification for benefits. Whenever a government engages in race-conscious decision making, it must show that it had the most compelling of reasons and that it subjected itself to careful judicial oversight.

"Diversity in all facets is a key ingredient in America's continuing evolution toward a fully integrated society that honors inclusiveness and is free of racial and ethnic hatred. But diversity should not be achieved through discrimination."

The case was brought by white firefighters in New Haven. The New Haven Fire Department had created and given an exam to determine who would be promoted to lieutenant in the department. When the results of the exam were tallied, it was apparent that only white (and one Hispanic) firefighters would be immediately promoted as a result. Instead of certifying the exam and promoting the firefighters, the city threw out the exam, claiming that it would be subject to a lawsuit by African-American fire fighters. The white firefighters sued, claiming racial discrimination.

This case poses unique challenges to the high court and ADL offers a novel approach for adjudicating it. Asserting that the lower courts' scrutiny of New Haven's race-based action was inadequate, the League's brief, while critical of New Haven, was filed in support of neither party to focus attention on what standard the courts should have used to ensure that the city's basis for its action was legally sufficient.

The brief suggests that the court could craft an appropriate standard by looking to voting rights cases where it required a municipality which said it feared litigation (New Haven's contention here) to demonstrate "a strong basis in evidence" for its fear. That way, the burden will shift to the city to see if it can produce a sound legal justification for its decision.

ADL's 95-year history is marked by a commitment to protecting the civil rights of all persons, whether they are members of a minority group or of a non-minority group, and to assuring that each person receives equal treatment under the law. ADL's brief was authored by Michael Smith and Martin Karlinsky of the law firm Butzel Long.



The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
****************************************************************

You see, only whites and one Hispanic passed the exam and, because of that, the Afro-Americans who FAILED screamed "unfair test".

The Supreme Court will rule that the city's ( New Haven) act of throwing out the test because no Afro-American passed was an act of racial discrimination.

As professor of Political Science at Harvard remarked years ago---White students must admit their guilt so that minority students do not have to admit their incapcity.

****************************************************************

But the far left need not fear. Barack Hussein Obama( himself an Affirmative Action person will, in the next two or three years will nominate more far left wingers to the Supreme Court. Then, the already unresponsive bureaucracy in DC will add more incompetent minorities to its already swollen rolls. And the Republic will slowly grind to a halt.

Proof? How well does your local post office work? And, when did it begin to break down?

0 Replies
 
H2O MAN
 
  0  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 06:36 am


Liberal and female: Sandra Sotomyer
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  3  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 07:09 am
@genoves,
genoves wrote:
Ms. Sotomayor fills some of the criteria for appointment--a female minority but Obama seems to be dissing other groups. Certainly the President can find a lesbian disabled minority female among the many candidates out there.

Actually Pamela Karlan, "the Scalia of the left", is both lesbian and decidedly more liberal than the candidates who made Obama's short list. So we know that at least some of his criteria are political.

***

Apart from that, could you please take it easy with the personal attacks as you discuss the substance of the issue? I have a sinking feeling this is pointless to ask, but I would appreciate it.
H2O MAN
 
  0  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 07:24 am
@Thomas,

genoves wrote:
Ms. Sotomayor fills some of the criteria for appointment--a female minority but Obama seems to be dissing other groups.

Certainly the President can find a lesbian disabled minority female among the many candidates out there.


Laughing
0 Replies
 
genoves
 
  -1  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 10:38 am
@Thomas,
Sir, I never make personal attacks to anyone who is polite. I respect your input and, as you may have noticed, have treated you with the utmost respect( perhaps not your ideas but that is what one does in a debate).

Perhaps I have at times been a little harsh. I think I have been reading too much left wing garbage such as Moveon.org. I am sure that you know that they have called President Bush every name in the book. It may, for the right wing bloggers, be revenge time!
0 Replies
 
Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 10:01 pm
Obama nominated Sotomayor
genoves
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 11:29 pm
@Thomas,
Yes, sir, Mr. Thomas--Obama made one of the shrewdist nominations in years.
This nomination, which will undoubtedly be approved will cement Latino feminist and liberal voters.

The only out for affluent male entreprenuers will be to offshore as many of their businesses as possible.
0 Replies
 
genoves
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 11:33 pm
It is my opinon, Mr. Thomas, that someone should council Judge Sotomayor not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is not well known that the Treasury of the United States depends very heavily on the tax contributions of a rather small section of the population.

0 Replies
 
genoves
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 May, 2009 11:40 pm
It is my opinon, Mr. Thomas, that someone should council Judge Sotomayor not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is not well known that the Treasury of the United States depends very heavily on the tax contributions of a rather small section of the population.

NOTE:

DON'T KILL OFF THESE 'GEESE'
41K LAY GOLDEN EGGS TO PAY HALF INCOME TAX: CITY



March 10, 2009

They're the golden geese of New York - a mere 41,282 taxpayers who account for nearly half the city's income-tax collections - and some are bound to fly the coop if the rich get hammered with higher taxes, a top city official warned yesterday as a dire new report forecast more job losses, higher deficits and dwindling tax revenues.

"The basic concern is how do you collect revenue from New York City's tax base if you have a relatively small group of individuals paying a very large proportion of your income-tax revenue and you demonstrate a policy that appears to be going after that sector particularly," Mark Page, the city's budget director, testified at a City Council budget hearing.

"You don't need to lose many of them before ending up with less money than you had before you increased the tax."

Officials later provided figures showing that 1 percent of taxpayers, or 41,282 filers earning $500,000 or more, paid 47.8 percent of the $7.3 billion collected by the city in income taxes.

The top half percent, or 19,387 filers with $1 million or more in taxable income, accounted for 40.6 percent.

Those in the upper income brackets face a potential double-whammy this year.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn has proposed boosting the city's income tax from 3.65 to 4.25 percent for those earning at least $297,000; to 4.45 percent for folks making $532,000 and to 4.65 percent for the $1.2 million league and above.

At the same time, there's a movement in Albany to raise the state income tax from 6.85 percent to 8.25 percent for people making a minimum of $250,000; 8.97 percent for those making $500,000 and above in taxable income and 10.3 percent for those at the $1-million-and-up level.

City Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is trying to unseat Mayor Bloomberg, reversed an earlier position and told the council he would support higher taxes at the top tier, $500,000 and above.

"We are in different times now," he said, explaining the switch from his opposition in October.

Meanwhile, a new report by the Independent Budget Office estimated the city would lose 270,000 jobs between the first quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2010, roughly 30,000 more than it had projected in January.

The agency also said sharply declining tax revenues will undo the mayor's January budget-balancing act and leave a gap of $1.2 billion in 2010 and $4.8 billion in 2011 - $1.6 billion more than the administration had expected two months ago.

At the council hearing, sparks flew as the discussion about tax policy grew testy, eventually devolving into all-out class warfare.



[email protected]


0 Replies
 
realjohnboy
 
  2  
Reply Wed 7 Apr, 2010 01:17 pm
Good afternoon. There has not been activity on this thread since last May. That will probably change. Justice John Paul Stevens has made it quite clear in the last week that he intends to retire during the Obama administration. It is assumed that the 90-year old Justice will probably leave after the Court's current session.
NPR's Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg had a piece on Morning Edition today (4/7) about something that court watchers described as an issue that might arise that could turn out to be "radioactive" or the "third rail" or "politically explosive."
Justice Stevens is the only Protestant on the Court. There are 6 Catholics and 2 Jews. Of the handful of names being bandied about as possible nominees, at least 1 is Jewish and 1 is Catholic.
Obviously, religion is sensitive, so it will -perhaps- be difficult to oppose a candidate for what might be regarded as a "politically incorrect" reason. After hearing the story, I read the transcript followed by readers' comments.
Some, in my mind, were a bit off the wall but others were quite thoughtful of the significance of the possibility of a Court being comprised only of Jews and Catholics.
roger
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Apr, 2010 02:17 pm
@realjohnboy,
I don't know. Race/ethnicity and gender are, or were sensitive issues. We have a black president and several female justices, one of whom is also hispanic. We can probably deal with a protestant.
0 Replies
 
MASSAGAT
 
  -1  
Reply Wed 7 Apr, 2010 08:34 pm
@realjohnboy,
Realjohnboy-- I followed your lead and went to the site on Supreme Court Candidates. You might be interested in the following article since it puts Stevens' coming resignation in a little different light than any article with which I am familiar.
0 Replies
 
 

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