August 5, 2010
The outcome was never in doubt. But the narrowness of the 63–37 margin by which the Senate confirmed Elena Kagan as Supreme Court's 112th justice this afternoon would stun a Rip Van Winkle who had slept through the rising partisan rancor that has poisoned judicial confirmations at all levels in recent years.
The vote in 1993 to confirm Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—who had a considerably more...
July 14, 2010
Why does the supposedly nonpartisan Supreme Court split so often along ideological lines, with the four conservatives locked in combat against the four liberals and the eclectic Justice Anthony Kennedy determining which faction wins?
And why do all of the justices so often find in the Constitution a mirror image of their own political and policy views on issues as diverse as abortion, race,...
June 30, 2010
As Elena Kagan's hearings ground through their third day, with confirmation virtually assured, viewers learned little that was new about the nominee. Mostly they saw senatorial skirmishes to fire up the conservative and liberal bases in an election year.
Republican senators tried to paint Kagan as political and deceptive on issues including so-called partial-birth abortion. But her detailed...
June 29, 2010
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary Committee's least partisan member, injected a distinctive and salutary element Tuesday afternoon into a dreary confirmation process drenched in partisanship, yet devoid of real drama. The South Carolina Republican engaged Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a good-natured dialogue—and tried to teach viewers a lesson—about the need to tamp down the bitter...
June 29, 2010
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary Committee's least partisan member, injected a distinctive and salutary element Tuesday afternoon into a dreary confirmation process drenched in partisanship, yet devoid of real drama. The South Carolina Republican engaged Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a good-natured dialogue—and tried to teach viewers a lesson—about the need to tamp down the bitter...
June 17, 2010
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has floated the idea of passing a new law to allow a retired Supreme Court justice to sit on a case in which a current justice has recused, to avoid 4–4 ties.
This proposal, reported on June 16 by National Law Journal's Blog of Legal Times based on an interview with Leahy, who said he had drafted a bill and would probably introduce it, would be...
June 1, 2010
The Supreme Court is dominated by right-wingers on a conservative activist, pro-corporate, anti-civil rights tear.
Or, perhaps, the court is driven by liberal activists who make up new constitutional rights out of whole cloth and may soon legislate a right to gay marriage.
It all depends on your point of view.
President Obama, his press secretary Robert Gibbs, Senate Judiciary Committee...
May 10, 2010
It’s a pretty safe bet that the Democratic-ruled Senate will confirm Solicitor General Elena Kagan, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, by about Aug. 6, with over 60 votes. But that’s not to deny that many conservatives—and some liberals—will raise passionate complaints that the 50-year-old Kagan is unfit to be a justice. Indeed, they’ve been attacking her for as long as she has been the...
May 9, 2010
Justice John Paul Stevens, who in most portrayals has migrated from the center of the court when appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975 to its left flank, has told several reporters that his ideology has not really changed much. Rather, according to Stevens, he has remained about where he always was, while newer and younger appointees have pushed the court to the right.
The record suggests...
May 1, 2010
One irony of President Obama's nomination today of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is that the effect of a Democratic president filling the seat of Republican-appointed Justice John Paul Stevens will likely be to make the Court more conservative.
Another irony is that after vowing to name a justice with "a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the...
