June 29, 2009
The Supreme Court's predictable 5-4 vote to reverse the decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and two federal appeals court colleagues against 17 white (and one Hispanic) plaintiffs in the now-famous New Haven, Conn., firefighters decision does not by itself prove that the Sotomayor position was unreasonable.
After all, it was hardly to be expected that the five more conservative justices -- who held...
June 26, 2009
The Supreme Court's decision on Thursday faulting school officials' intrusive semi-strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl suspected of hiding drugs that were forbidden in school, but not very dangerous, has generated spirited commentaries. See, for example, Dahlia Lithwick's in Slate, suggesting that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens "turned this ship around, I suspect,...
June 22, 2009
Consider two judicial nominees, both of whom have won bipartisan support and praise for their distinguished service on lower courts.
Nominee No. 1 had been a not-very-active member of his grandfather's all-male fishing club in Western Pennsylvania. It had a ramshackle old building with bunk beds, wooden tables and benches like a boys' summer camp. He resigned two years before his nomination....
June 20, 2009
His name has become a verb, one so crisp and eloquent that it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary: if you've been blocked from appointment to public office, you've been "borked." The term's namesake is Robert Bork, whose path to the Supreme Court was derailed in 1...His name has become a verb, one so crisp and eloquent that it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary: if you've...
June 16, 2009
(This analysis updates my July 12, 2008, column.)
We in the media habitually describe the Supreme Court as made up of four conservatives, four liberals and one swing-voting centrist, Anthony Kennedy. These labels serve reasonably well to situate the justices on the ideological spectrum compared with one another.
But while the court is sometimes called "conservative," it looks pretty...
June 12, 2009
I admire many things about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, especially her deep compassion for underprivileged people. I may well support her confirmation to the Supreme Court if her testimony next month dispels my concern that her decisions may be biased by the grievance-focused mind-set and the "wise Latina woman" superiority complex displayed in some of her speeches.
But close study of her...
June 9, 2009
My quick reaction to the July 13 timetable just announced by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is that Republicans probably don't have much basis for disputing it. As Leahy's statement details, the timetable he is using gives the Republicans about as much time as Democrats had to prepare for the hearings of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. My quick reaction to the July 13 timetable...
June 8, 2009
To Josh Patashnik of The New Republic, my latest column was "a real head-scratcher." On the magazine's blog, he refutes what he believes I argued -- that "the Supreme Court should ban racial preferences because it's what the majority of Americans want."
He concludes that "if any judicial philosophy qualifies as...
To Josh Patashnik of The New Republic, my latest column...
June 5, 2009
Conservative critics of Judge Sonia Sotomayor may be digging themselves into a hole if they keep hurling the tired old "liberal activist" slogan at her. The reason is that her supporters can plausibly retort that these days, the Supreme Court's conservatives are as activist as the liberals, especially on racial issues.
But conservatives and like-minded centrists can win the political...
June 4, 2009
I hear that Keith Olbermann declared on MSNBC Tuesday evening that I am "runner-up" for his "hypocrisy award" and also "a fraud."
In case anyone takes Olbermann seriously, I identify below the false and misleading assertions of fact that he packed into his 60-second diatribe.
• Olbermann claimed that I characterized Sonia Sotomayor's 1974 letter to the editor...
