Future Nominations for Judgeships

Posted on 16 October 2018 by eehines

A denizen of flyover country—Jan Graham of Nebraska, in fact—had a thought in her Letter to the Editor of Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal:

Every one of those Harvard and Yale law students protesting Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment should have their names written down and kept in case they want to be a judge someday. At that point their college-age record can be used to show that they don’t believe in due process and shouldn’t ever be considered for the bench.

Nor can they be considered, legitimately, for any prosecutorial office, Federal, State, or count/parish.

Full stop.

This is a preview of Future Nominations for Judgeships. Read the full post (129 words, estimated 31 secs reading time)

The ABA and Judicial Ratings

Posted on 15 October 2018 by eehines

Judge, now Justice, Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court and hearing cases. The American Bar association is still looking for relevance here. The ABA, after first giving Kavanaugh glowing marks as a judge wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee that it was “reopening” its evaluation—timing its letter for 5 Oct, just before the Senate’s floor vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The ABA was ignored when Kavanaugh, et al., were being evaluated for a Supreme Court nomination and again when Kavanaugh was nominated. That prior ABA endorsement was simply the association’s jumping on the band wagon.

This is a preview of The ABA and Judicial Ratings. Read the full post (289 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

A Newly Conservative Court?

Posted on 12 October 2018 by eehines

Jess Bravin, writing in The Wall Street Journal, thought so.

When Justice Brett Kavanaugh takes the bench Tuesday, it will mark the culmination of the Republican Party’s 50-year drive to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

At the least, he argued,

[A] five-justice majority more sensitive to regulatory and litigation costs on business should tip more outcomes toward industry and employers, imposing higher bars for workers, consumers and environmentalists, according to legal experts who have studied the court and Justice Kavanaugh’s jurisprudence. At the same time, the new majority is likely to show more sympathy for social conservatives resisting the encroachment of gay rights and access to contraceptives, as well as greater tolerance for state initiatives to curb the availability of abortion.

This is a preview of A Newly Conservative Court?. Read the full post (256 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

Partisanship

Posted on 10 October 2018 by eehines

Chris Wallace interviewed Senator Ben Cardin (D, MD) on his Fox News Sunday program last Sunday.

Here are some of the claims Cardin made.

The change that Senator McConnell made to the rules on the Supreme Court really caused us to be much more partisan in this[.]

And

I don’t believe that Justice Kavanaugh’s in the mainstream of judicial thought.

And

Kavanaugh’s confirmation puts at risk “the progress we’ve made on health care issues, on women’s Constitutional rights, and on protecting the Mueller investigation.”

Not quite, although this is America, and Cardin is entitled [sic] to his spin.

This is a preview of Partisanship. Read the full post (306 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

The Supreme Court

Posted on 8 October 2018 by eehines

As I write this (Saturday morning), Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh has not been confirmed; although, that seems more likely than I had thought Friday morning before the cloture vote. Nevertheless, here’s why we need another textualist Justice on the Court—from the words of another Supreme Court Justice.

Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said Friday she fears the high court may lack a justice going forward who would serve as a swing-vote on cases….

And

Kagan said at a conference for women at Princeton University that over the past three decades…there was a figure on the bench “who found the center or people couldn’t predict in that sort of way.”

This is a preview of The Supreme Court. Read the full post (384 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

A Response

Posted on 4 October 2018 by eehines

Recall Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D, CT) sly innuendo about Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh during last Thursday’s (has it been only a week?) Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to receive testimony from Dr Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh:

As a federal judge, you’re aware of the jury instruction falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus [false in one thing, false in everything], are you not? You’re aware of that jury instruction.

Where Blumenthal was being legally pedantic, Victor Davis Hanson has an idea of an entirely appropriate response by Judge Kavanaugh, a broader, literary one, from Horace:

This is a preview of A Response. Read the full post (148 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)

An FBI Investigation

Posted on 1 October 2018 by eehines

Senator Jeff Flake (R, AZ) sold his Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh confirmation floor vote for a week-long FBI investigation into Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh. Ostensibly this was a deal he made with his BFF, Senator Chris Coons (D, DE), in return for the Senate’s Progressive-Democrats dropping their complaints that six prior FBI background checks of Kavanaugh didn’t turn up enough dirt to suit them.

This is a preview of An FBI Investigation. Read the full post (455 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Unitary Executive

Posted on 8 September 2018 by eehines

Senator Ben Sasse (R, NE), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that held hearings last week on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, had an op-ed in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal that opened with this.

Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of hating women, hating children, hating clean air, wanting dirty water. He’s been declared an existential threat to the nation.

He’s also accused of favoring a unitary Executive and thereby ceding dangerously broad power to the President.

This is a preview of Unitary Executive. Read the full post (216 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)

Connections

Posted on 6 September 2018 by eehines

One in particular stands out for me: that between Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) and the truth. Charles Hurt, in the Washington Times, has the sordid story.

[Klobuchar] claims to have read 148,000 documents that reveal Judge Kavanaugh to be so heinous as to be unfit for the high court.

OK, let’s say Ms. Klobuchar spent two minutes reading each document. That would be 296,000 minutes—or 205 days—reading these documents. Which is pretty remarkable considering Judge Kavanaugh was nominated 55 days ago.

This is a preview of Connections. Read the full post (285 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

Kavanaugh and Precedents

Posted on 5 September 2018 by eehines

Brent Kendall, in a piece in Monday’s The Wall Street Journal, wrote about the importance of judicial precedence and how willing Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh would be to overturn them.

Liberals warn that key rulings on abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights could be weakened or reversed by a court that leans further to the right. Many conservatives, on the other hand, hope those precedents will be limited by future rulings and eventually crumble, even if Judge Kavanaugh moves carefully rather than tearing through established doctrine.

This is a preview of Kavanaugh and Precedents. Read the full post (560 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

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