tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57391255026801070972012-01-24T15:27:36.784-05:00Law &amp; Justice Blog<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.comBlogger1221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-15162365977747385192012-01-23T08:11:00.001-05:002012-01-23T08:15:07.168-05:00

    &nbsp Some 80 years ago, a citizens’ posse in Alabama hauled nine black teenagers off a railroad car and turned them over to authorities to be charged with raping two white girls. The Scottsboro Boys, as they came to be known, were convicted and all but one of them sentenced to death after a series of trials with inadequate legal representation and conducted in a mob atmosphere.     &nbsp

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    &nbsp A school fires a teacher when she tries to return to her job after having taken a medical leave for a doctor-diagnosed disability. That sounds like a violation of the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for individuals with physical or mental disabilities.     &nbsp Apparently not, however, if the school is

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-15502518808096354172012-01-09T17:42:00.001-05:002012-01-09T17:47:04.991-05:00

    &nbsp When John Marshall Harlan appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1955 for confirmation to the Supreme Court, Sen. James Eastland, the race-baiting Mississippi Democrat, wanted to ask about the court’s still new school desegregation decision. But no matter how Eastland phrased the question, Harlan was giving no hints about his views on the ruling. “I should not be asked to

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    &nbsp Like the non-barking dog in the Sherlock Holmes story, many of the most significant legal developments in 2011 can be seen in the news that did not happen. Here are some of the past year’s most important non-events:     &nbsp Guantanamo; military commissions. The Guantanamo Bay prison camp remains in operation two years after President Obama’s original deadline for closing. Bipartisan

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    &nbsp President Jimmy Carter is commonly listed as a failed chief executive, but his administration created a lasting legacy by making support for human rights a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy. In the three decades since Carter left the White House, no administration — Republican or Democratic — has felt free to disregard human rights issues in making major foreign policy decisions or

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    &nbsp Hypocrisy was aptly defined by the French essayist La Rochefoucauld as the homage that vice renders to virtue. Twice last week, Senate Republicans hypocritically paid homage to the principle of executive branch authority by blocking nominations by President Obama to an important federal court and a new consumer protection agency.     &nbsp The GOP’s hypocrisy was especially blatant in

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    &nbsp The Senate made a gallant effort last week to justify its former reputation as the world’s greatest deliberative body as it tried to define the government’s authority to detain suspected terrorists. The week began with a bipartisan compromise fashioned by two senators with experience generally taking the high road on the issues and ended on Dec. 1 with a thorough, and well-reasoned,

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-78896250832634354582011-11-14T08:55:00.002-05:002011-11-14T08:58:07.774-05:00

    &nbsp Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had a simple, direct question for the government lawyer defending the right of police to use a GPS device to track a suspect’s automobile for as long as a month without a search warrant. The government’s answer, after a moment of hesitation and a cloud of legalese, was at bottom also simple and direct — and scary in the extreme.     &nbsp Michael

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    &nbsp As a Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas presented himself as a cautious jurist committed to judicial restraint. “I have no agenda to change existing case law,” Thomas told a Republican senator during his confirmation hearing after being asked about his critical views about school desegregation. “That’s not my predisposition. It's not the way that I approach my job.”     &nbsp In his

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-61846733648395691292011-10-24T04:22:00.001-04:002011-10-24T04:24:07.718-04:00

    &nbsp Congress touched on some important First Amendment rights two decades ago when it passed a law requiring cable systems to carry the signals of all local broadcast stations. Cable systems argued that the government had no business telling them what to carry – arguments analogous to those heard today from the opponents of the individual health insurance mandate now being challenged before

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-69299651929010471012011-10-17T10:36:00.004-04:002011-12-10T20:24:39.660-05:00

    &nbsp For all their undoubted bravery, the men and women who waged the battle for civil rights for black Americans in the 1950s and ’60s were not alone in their struggles. They had behind them and on their side black civil rights organizations, black churches, some white liberals in churches and synagogues, some sympathetic coverage in the news media, and, as early as Brown v. Board of

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-17228992395039284162011-10-11T08:28:00.005-04:002011-10-12T14:20:17.094-04:00

Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir. John Paul Stevens (Little Brown, 2011).       Sometime between John Paul Stevens’ year as a law clerk in 1947-48 and his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1975, the justices changed the way that they voted on cases in their private conferences. Back when, the justices voted in reverse order of seniority: junior justice first on up to the chief. When he

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-6682936545373700762011-10-03T07:41:00.004-04:002011-10-11T08:26:06.063-04:00

      When Thomas Jefferson and his fellow revolutionaries declared the American colonies’ independence from England, they began by explaining the need to lay out their reasons, in factual detail, for such a momentous decision. “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” Jefferson wrote, “requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”       What was true then

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      Troy Davis very probably shot and killed Mark MacPhail, a Savannah, Ga., police officer, in the early morning hours of Aug. 19, 1989, as MacPhail went to the aid of a homeless man being assaulted by Davis and two friends.       That is the conclusion a dispassionate reader is quite likely to reach after reading the 172-page opinion by U.S. District Court Judge William T. Moore Jr. rejecting

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-76068328687971051272011-09-19T12:39:00.001-04:002011-09-19T12:42:12.265-04:00

      House Republicans could not get to the microphones and e-mail blasts fast enough after the Obama administration announced in February that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). House Speaker John Boehner denounced the move as “pandering” and immediately raised the possibility of the House intervening in litigation to defend the 1996

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    &nbsp As California’s secretary of state, Jerry Brown helped draft and win overwhelming voter approval of a far-reaching initiative in June 1974 requiring disclosure of campaign spending in state races and establishing conflict-of-interest restrictions on state and local officeholders. Brown’s support for Proposition 9 helped win nomination on the same day as the Democratic candidate for

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-48178178727821291182011-09-05T22:34:00.003-04:002011-10-11T08:27:20.704-04:00

     Walter Masterson was on a conference call in the World Trade Center’s Building 5 when the first hijacked plane hit on Sept. 11, 2001. He got out of the building and, disconcerted, had to be directed by a police officer to get to safety. For the next two weeks, Masterson recalls, New Yorkers were on their best behavior. “Rudeness vanished,” he says. “Everybody helped. Nobody wanted for

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-39428422197631041212011-08-29T08:30:00.002-04:002011-08-29T08:37:23.348-04:00

      James Womble brought in the new year in 2003 by drinking and smoking crack cocaine for several hours with his girlfriend and a friend, Rodney Harper. In the early morning hours, an acquaintance, George Clark, forced his way into the apartment along with another man to collect money that Harper owed him.       Clark and Harper argued in a back room while the stranger allegedly held Womble

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-53830647114879694612011-08-15T08:40:00.002-04:002011-08-29T07:25:58.529-04:00

      When the Supreme Court adjourned for its summer recess last year, the court’s conservative majority was under fire for having opened the floodgates to unlimited political spending by corporations. The ruling in the Citizens United case seemed to many emblematic of the Roberts Court’s undue solicitude for the rights and interests of corporations.       This year, the justices left

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-27742939701139981882011-08-09T13:57:00.007-04:002011-08-09T14:20:48.434-04:00

      Gregorio Igartua voted in the 1976 presidential election, but not in any federal elections since then. But it’s not for lack of trying.       Igartua, a lawyer in Puerto Rico, has waged a two-decade legal battle to try to win voting rights for himself and the rest of the island’s 4 million U.S. citizens. He voted in Virginia in 1976 while going to law school, but once back in Puerto Rico

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-89086873082835871742011-07-19T10:56:00.005-04:002011-08-29T07:35:44.631-04:00

      Richard Nagareda was a well loved professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, a nationally recognized expert on class action lawsuits, and a thoughtful and highly accessible source for journalists until his untimely death last October at age 47.       Nagareda achieved a measure of posthumous influence, however, in the Supreme Court’s decision this past term to kill the giant sex

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-45877695138773948102011-07-04T09:44:00.003-04:002011-07-04T09:50:20.244-04:00

      It takes three years of law school to think like a lawyer, but one can grow out of it. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, however, seems stuck in a law school mode of elevating legal form over practical substance, rules over logic. The results, in several decisions in the court’s just-concluded term, may make sense in a law school classroom, but not in the real world.       No

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-36842476853362268532011-06-27T00:28:00.001-04:002011-06-27T00:30:47.387-04:00

      Clarence Thomas took the oath of office as a Supreme Court justice two decades ago under an ethics cloud cast by charges of sexual harassment that came down to a still unresolved swearing contest between himself and Anita Hill. Today, Thomas is again under an ethics cloud, but for the most part the actions and omissions being questioned are undisputed, with only their significance up for

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-69297093865132438882011-06-20T08:15:00.002-04:002011-06-20T08:21:14.133-04:00

      For all their education and practice in rhetorical skills, presidents sometimes have trouble with the simplest and most straightforward of words. Bill Clinton stumbled over the meaning of “is.” George W. Bush tortured the definition of “torture.” And now Barack Obama is telling Congress and the public that the United States is not engaged in “hostilities” in the Libyan civil war.      

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-43842660765303397162011-06-13T05:22:00.002-04:002011-06-13T05:25:41.187-04:00

      Whatever else one can say about Newt Gingrich’s shot-in-the-foot presidential campaign, the former speaker of the House was right in his fateful “Meet the Press” appearance to caution his fellow Republicans against “right-wing social engineering.” Gingrich directed his advice to the House Republicans who want to transform Medicare, but the Republican appointees who now control the Supreme

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-77480342567931653832011-06-05T18:33:00.000-04:002011-06-06T04:12:31.933-04:00

      Six weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft called a news conference to announce steps the Justice Department was taking “to protect the United States from the threat of terrorist aliens.” One part of the strategy, Ashcroft said, was to take “suspected terrorists off the street” by the “aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses.”       One of the

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-859180393677158532011-05-31T05:26:00.004-04:002011-08-09T16:13:29.760-04:00

      The surprise in the Supreme Court’s ruling in the California prison case is not the decision by five justices to uphold an order requiring the release of about 30,000 prisoners over the next five years. The surprise comes from the votes of the four dissenters to leave the appalling conditions in the state’s prisons largely unaddressed.       The majority opinion in Brown v. Plata by

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-51300534161990611022011-05-23T11:24:00.001-04:002011-05-23T11:28:12.890-04:00

      Justice Antonin Scalia does not believe in a “living” Constitution. But 10 years ago he led a closely divided Supreme Court in reaffirming, in a context the Framers could not have imagined, the central provision of the Fourth Amendment: to protect “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, from unreasonable searches and seizures.”       In United

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-1529621209726588572011-05-16T05:00:00.003-04:002011-06-30T09:30:52.741-04:00

      President Obama won the lottery last week when three Democratic-appointed judges were randomly picked to hear the first appellate-level arguments in the constitutional challenges to the 2010 health care law. The two hours-plus of arguments before the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. [May 10], left observers and listeners — the audio is available on line, here — with few

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-705740036125554662011-05-09T03:08:00.002-04:002011-05-19T16:09:42.545-04:00

      Nearly a century and a half after the fact, Robert Redford has renewed the debate, in his movie The Conspirator, over whether the government was right to prosecute and execute Mary Surratt for conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.       Historical debates over wartime policies like this one are peculiarly durable because the legal and ethical issues are so stark and

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-41951375425671005992011-05-02T08:43:00.004-04:002011-05-03T08:48:53.671-04:00

      For years, business groups have been touting to consumers the supposed advantages of arbitration over litigation to settle disputes. Arbitration is quick, easy, and inexpensive, they say. Those advantages, they say, explain why so many companies now specify in consumer contracts that disputes are to be resolved in arbitration instead of in courts.       It turns out, however, that

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-90136592671763293482011-04-24T22:23:00.001-04:002011-04-24T22:27:56.145-04:00

      One year after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, the job of cleaning up the Gulf coast still faces daunting challenges. So too the job of compensating the victims of this environmental disaster: tens of thousands of people whose lives and livelihoods have been damaged by the oil that has fouled beaches and spoiled valuable fisheries.       Despite the challenges, the victims of

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-9362540179363776572011-04-11T05:01:00.004-04:002011-04-11T13:45:08.229-04:00

      A riddle, attributed to Abraham Lincoln: How many legs does a horse have if you call the tail a leg? Answer: Four. Because a tail is a tail no matter what you call it.       The Supreme Court confronted its own version of this riddle last week (April 4). Does a government subsidy to religious schools possibly violate separation of church and state if you call it a tax credit instead? In a 5

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-74128450679426967642011-04-04T02:23:00.002-04:002011-04-04T13:09:13.587-04:00

      The government always wins when justice is done. That’s what prosecutors often say when they lose a jury verdict. By that standard, the government lost big last week when the Supreme Court blinked at an evident injustice by giving the New Orleans district attorney’s office a pass for constitutional violations that put an innocent man on the state’s death row for 14 years.       John

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-63489065939219452772011-03-28T08:37:00.002-04:002011-03-28T08:50:18.079-04:00

      The Supreme Court struck a major blow for racial justice in 1954 when it outlawed racial segregation in public schools. But Brown v. Board of Education said nothing about legally enforced racial segregation in other public services or in public facilities.       Even so, the principle that discrimination on the basis of race violates the Equal Protection Clause was evidently just as

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-3542366210904869442011-03-21T17:00:00.004-04:002011-03-21T17:10:00.565-04:00

      Two weeks after taking office, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu held a town hall meeting last May about the city’s beleaguered police department. As reported by the New Orleans Tribune, Landrieu closed with a campaign-style promise: “I am not going to be commander-in-chief of a police department that engages in racial profiling.”       Ten months later, the U.S. Justice Department has

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-36940755141220616132011-03-14T13:01:00.001-04:002011-03-14T13:04:45.669-04:00

      It’s that time of the decade again: time for legislative and congressional redistricting by state lawmakers or, in a few states, specially created commissions. The Supreme Court struck a major blow for political democracy a half century ago by establishing the “one person, one vote” rule for electoral districts. In the past decade, however, the court has failed to finish the job by leaving

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-69442066606490124682011-03-06T16:49:00.002-05:002011-03-06T16:56:27.852-05:00

      The Westboro Baptist Church is a hate group. Its obsessively anti-gay founder, the Rev. Fred W. Phelps Sr., and Phelps’ family members who make up most of the congregation of his Topeka, Kan., church are hateful in thought and deed. No truly God-loving Christian would choose the funeral of a fallen serviceman to air such hateful views as “God hates fags” or “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-31511897024892923152011-02-28T20:01:00.004-05:002011-03-01T15:53:34.908-05:00

      Forget what you heard or read about Guantanamo: American gulag, recruiting tool for al Qaeda, law-free zone. Think instead of Guantanamo as “a rule of law success story,” an off-shore prison camp that President Obama should embrace rather than criticize.       Those are the views at least of two experts who have worn white hats during the fierce debates over the policies established by the

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-56706902797399914992011-02-23T14:48:00.005-05:002011-02-23T16:41:29.850-05:00

      The Obama administration will no longer defend the central provision of the 1996 law that prevents the federal government from providing marriage-based benefits to legally married same-sex couples.       In announcing the new stance on Wednesday (Feb. 23), Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the government has concluded that all anti-gay laws should be subject to “heightened scrutiny”

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-90459013550252509942011-02-21T12:26:00.002-05:002011-02-21T12:32:46.597-05:00

     Within a week of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson created a commission to investigate the slaying and leaned hard on Chief Justice Earl Warren to agree to serve as chairman. Warren reluctantly took on the assignment and over the next seven months led a highly limited review of evidence gathered by others that concluded — just as

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-5574802601199011832011-02-14T09:18:00.001-05:002011-02-14T09:24:36.111-05:00

      “Frances” was a “hard-charging” CIA counterterrorism analyst with no field experience in January 2004 when she pushed the agency into kidnapping a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who was then imprisoned and tortured at a secret “black site” in Afghanistan. Others at the agency’s Counterterrorism Center doubted fingering el-Masri as an anti-American terrorist, but Frances persisted and won

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-37865883408587044122011-02-07T08:55:00.002-05:002011-02-07T08:59:35.711-05:00

      The Obama administration is getting mixed reviews for its handling of the political crisis in Egypt — and deservedly so. President Obama has put the administration’s prestige and his own on the line in calling on Egypt’s embattled president Hosni Mubarak to make way for a transition to a more democratic government. In the administration’s first two years, however, the president and his

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-16519184529713114552011-01-31T08:08:00.004-05:002011-01-31T13:38:45.957-05:00

      Donald Specter had reached a critical point in his argument before the Supreme Court defending a lower federal court’s order to reduce prison overcrowding in California when Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. interrupted. “This is going to have,” the justice began, but caught himself, “it seems likely to have an effect on public safety. And the experts can testify to whatever they want, but you

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-17062305041417603502011-01-23T20:41:00.002-05:002011-01-23T20:45:32.515-05:00

      Smartphone users, beware. All that personal information stored in the device’s innards is open to the prying eyes of the police if you happen to be arrested, in some jurisdictions for nothing more serious than a traffic violation.       That’s the upshot of a decision by the California Supreme Court this month [Jan. 3], rejecting a drug defendant’s argument that police needed a warrant to

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-66154822429180706742011-01-17T09:48:00.002-05:002011-01-17T09:52:52.792-05:00

      Sandra Day O’Connor, retired Supreme Court justice, could not contain her delight as she recalled her recent visit to her former courtroom.       “It was absolutely incredible,” O’Connor said in a Dec. 13 program at the Kennedy Library in Boston. “On the far right was a woman. Boom, boom, boom. Near the middle was a woman. On the far left was a woman. Three of them. Now think of it. It was

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-89882554818012103862011-01-10T17:11:00.003-05:002011-01-10T18:07:29.477-05:00

    &nbsp John Roberts had been an academic star, an outstanding lawyer and a federal judge before becoming chief justice in 2005. Even so, nine months after taking office, Roberts went back to basics by re-reading the U.S. Constitution. “I thought I ought at least to pause for an hour or so and read the original document to see how close we got to what the Framers wrote,” Roberts said in a

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-1957612354245032012011-01-03T12:25:00.001-05:002011-01-03T12:28:12.152-05:00

      The Senate got tied up in knots in February 1917 when President Woodrow Wilson asked for authority to arm U.S. merchant ships to defend against Germany’s submarine warfare. Despite the Democratic president’s re-election and the Democratic majority in the Senate, Republican senators mounted a filibuster to block the legislation.       Wilson solved the immediate problem by arming merchant

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-2924349486033774342010-12-20T16:24:00.001-05:002010-12-20T16:27:34.824-05:00

      The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington was all set Saturday night [Dec. 18] for its seasonal frolic “Men in Tights: A Pink Nutcracker.” But artistic director Jeff Buhrman wanted to begin on a serious note.       A few hours earlier, the U.S. Senate had completed congressional action on a bill to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military. In honor of the occasion,

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-2593109608569810272010-12-14T12:46:00.003-05:002010-12-14T13:00:44.518-05:00

     Hard cases make bad law, it is said. The U.S. government has a hard case to try to make against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for masterminding the biggest dump of classified government secrets in history. It will be up to the courts to try not to make bad law out of it.      On the surface, of course, the case looks like prosecutor’s child play. Assange has boasted globally about

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-82649619643062076282010-12-05T22:58:00.004-05:002010-12-07T09:00:52.751-05:00

      Thirty years ago, a young federal appeals court judge in California voted to uphold the Navy’s then-existing policy of discharging any service member who engaged in homosexual acts. The “blanket rule” was “harsh” in individual cases and perhaps “broader than necessary,” the judge wrote. But the Navy had “multiple grounds” for adopting the regulation, the judge concluded, including potential

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-40386639518541996442010-12-01T14:55:00.002-05:002010-12-01T15:12:45.376-05:00

    &nbsp David Garland could hardly have wished for better luck than to have his new book on capital punishment favorably written up in the New York Review of Books by no less than a retired Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens. And for Stevens, the unsolicited assignment from the magazine’s editors gave him the chance to elaborate on his reasoning in concluding two years ago that the death

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-82896000958850804182010-11-22T06:33:00.003-05:002010-11-22T06:41:04.987-05:00

      In his final weeks in office, President George W. Bush was beset with what he describes in his memoir Decision Points as a “flood” of pardon requests submitted by people who “pulled me aside” to special plead for some friend, family member or former colleague. At first “frustrated” and then “disgusted,” Bush resolved “that I would not pardon anyone who went outside the formal [Justice

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-10970519802624308672010-11-14T23:07:00.001-05:002010-11-14T23:09:36.100-05:00

      The United States has just completed its first, post-Citizens United national election. Total cost: $4 billion, including nearly $300 million from independent groups that benefited from the Supreme Court’s decision freeing corporations and unions to spend unlimited sums in political campaigns. The reviews are decidedly mixed.      “We’ve just seen our first $4 billion election, and it wasn’

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-5380970305691571342010-11-08T09:31:00.006-05:002010-11-17T00:58:02.069-05:00

      Jeffrey Neary drew the ire of social conservatives in 2003 when, without realizing, the Sioux City, Iowa, judge signed a divorce decree for a lesbian couple who had moved to the state after having formed a civil union in Vermont. Iowa did not recognize same-sex marriages at the time, so Neary revised the court document to show that he had dissolved the couple’s civil union.       Anti-gay

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-78801314954971161892010-10-31T23:02:00.003-04:002010-11-01T08:42:27.043-04:00

      Anyone following the contentious arguments over immigration policy is in for a real treat on Monday: a carefully organized debate, broadcast nationwide on C-SPAN (9 AM PDT), over Arizona’s controversial new law aimed at cracking down on illegal aliens.       The participants will be two experienced lawyers: John Bouma, chairman of a big Phoenix-based law firm, representing Arizona, and

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-40452653870752666572010-10-24T12:43:00.005-04:002010-10-25T10:25:35.993-04:00

      “The past is never forgotten; it’s never even past.” — William Faulkner       Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice with a long, but selective, memory. Apparently, the same is true of his wife, Virginia Thomas, who made front-page news this month not only as a Republican/Tea Party activist but also as a loyal spouse seeking vindication for her husband nearly two decades after

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-85635996394035429552010-10-18T13:35:00.004-04:002010-10-18T14:06:11.690-04:00

    &nbsp Tea Party types who want to strike a blow against governmental abuse and constitutional violations need not travel to Washington, D.C., to find a target for their protests. They can go instead to the nearest state or federal courthouse, where prosecutors are quite likely to be committing negligent mistakes or willful misconduct far more often than commonly acknowledged.     &nbsp The

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-40020462722214311082010-10-13T17:44:00.005-04:002010-10-13T17:55:50.011-04:00

    &nbsp A cardinal tenet of First Amendment law teaches that any regulation of speech or the press is likely to deter some forms of expression on the legal side of the restriction. This “chilling effect” requires that executive officials, legislative bodies, and, above all, courts take care to regulate First Amendment-protected expression only with lines that are either so clear or so stringent

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-16130822259298258422010-10-03T12:36:00.002-04:002010-10-03T12:39:17.959-04:00

    &nbsp Brennan and Marshall. Their names were linked while on the Supreme Court and remain lastingly connected years after their deaths. William J. Brennan Jr., the affable Irishman and architect of the Warren Court’s most important decisions. Thurgood Marshall, the gruff African American crusader against racial segregation and first of his race on the Supreme Court.     &nbsp Democratic

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-25811426270686020572010-09-27T15:04:00.002-04:002010-09-27T15:09:59.069-04:00

    &nbspChief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., former Reagan and Bush I administration lawyer and former corporate attorney, won Senate confirmation in 2005 after promising that he had no “agenda” for the Supreme Court. But five years later, no one should be surprised that Roberts and the court he leads have regularly favored business interests in the legal issues that business counts as high

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-6968206125532705252010-09-21T09:11:00.001-04:002010-09-21T09:11:37.056-04:00

     It has been five years this month since Judge John G. Roberts Jr. went before the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking confirmation to be chief justice of the United States. Roberts won senators over with his legal knowledge, smooth demeanor, and personal charm. He also promised, if confirmed, to respect precedent, forswear any “agenda,” strive for fewer divided rulings, and decide cases like

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-41822496492369809222010-09-19T18:12:00.006-04:002010-09-20T13:14:45.366-04:00

     It has been five years this month since Judge John G. Roberts Jr. went before the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking confirmation to be chief justice of the United States. Roberts won senators over with his legal knowledge, smooth demeanor, and personal charm. He also promised, if confirmed, to respect precedent, forswear any “agenda,” strive for fewer divided rulings, and decide cases like

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-76568171087930264452010-09-13T09:28:00.007-04:002010-09-20T09:40:55.821-04:00

For wherever the common law gives a right or prohibits an injury, it also gives a remedy by action.Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England (1765-1769)* * * For every wrong, a remedy: the principle is as old as Blackstone. But five victims of post-9/11 torture conducted or colluded in by the United States government had the door to the courthouse slammed in their faces last week. And the

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-74731898773136504932010-08-31T13:30:00.011-04:002010-09-20T09:45:57.827-04:00

. . . but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (U.S. Constitution, Art. VI, cl. 3)       The Framers could hardly have been clearer, but political history has made short shrift of their effort to create what in 21st-century parlance would be called a non-sectarian state. Over more than two centuries now, every

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-19605326760556323432010-08-06T08:55:00.003-04:002010-08-07T15:17:42.211-04:00

      When future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis was defending early in the 20th century the constitutionality of an Oregon law limiting hours of laundry workers, he adopted a then unheard of legal strategy. Brandeis filled his brief to the Supreme Court not with legal abstractions, but with documented facts showing the adverse health and social effects of long hours on laundry workers,

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-8966790028893028692010-07-26T11:55:00.003-04:002010-07-26T12:26:51.902-04:00

      Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans latched on to one more issue last week [July 20] to use against Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan: the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. But the issue puts Republicans in the contradictory position of begging Kagan, if confirmed, to be a judicial activist and limit the power of Congress to exercise one of the most important of the enumerated powers

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-30589399361356892862010-07-10T11:57:00.004-04:002010-07-11T07:21:44.113-04:00

      This is a column about Robert Byrd, Bill Clinton, Anthony Kennedy, and Elena Kagan. But it’s mostly about gay marriage and the legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, an anti-gay law signed by Clinton as president and likely to come before Kagan as the next Supreme Court justice.       In his eulogy for Byrd, Clinton excused the longtime West Virginia senator’s membership in the Ku

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-40102115727026500562010-06-28T15:50:00.004-04:002010-06-29T09:24:03.128-04:00

      The Supreme Court ended its 2009-2010 term in dramatic fashion on Monday [June 28] with sharply divided, 5-4 decisions extending Second Amendment protection to state and local gun control laws and striking down a part, but only a small part, of a corporate reform law passed in the wake of the Enron scandal.      In two other rulings, the court rejected a Christian group’s effort to validate

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-86745663088770903452010-06-23T15:07:00.004-04:002010-06-26T11:04:57.264-04:00

    &nbspRalph Fertig has been advocating the cause of Kurdish national liberation for nearly a quarter century. But the longtime civil and human rights activist professes not to know much about the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the United States government lists as a foreign terrorist organization.     &nbsp“I don’t even know who is a member of the PKK,” Fertig told a radio interviewer

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-7076570268828543072010-06-18T11:54:00.007-04:002010-06-18T17:12:25.690-04:00

      Judged by the result, the decision looks like a model of judicial restraint. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected a claim by landowners on Florida’s northern Gulf Coast that they had suffered an unconstitutional taking of property after beach restoration by local governments turned their oceanfront homes into ocean-view lots separated from the water by 75 feet of new sand.       Looked at

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-88125749690179149812010-06-09T09:49:00.002-04:002010-06-09T10:39:10.000-04:00

      Terrance Graham was a two-time juvenile offender, barely past his 19th birthday in 2006, when Judge Lance Day in Jacksonville, Fla., decided to send him to prison for the rest of his life “to protect the community.” Imagine what harms might have been prevented if the repeat corporate offender BP had come up before a likeminded judge sometime in the past. * * *       The cause of the April

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-17045990968350212052010-06-02T10:54:00.002-04:002010-06-02T10:57:21.326-04:00

      “Law and Order” may have ended its 20-year run, but Briscoe, Curtis, and all the other cops and prosecutors on the compelling TV series can rest content after a Supreme Court decision on Tuesday [June 1] that eases the rule on police interrogation established in the landmark Miranda case. By a 5-4 vote, the justices gave the green light to the kind of subtle coercion that “Law and Order”

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-770890609804478652010-05-17T11:31:00.002-04:002010-05-17T11:45:54.891-04:00

      Keith Toney got a new passport last summer. Usually, no big deal. But Keith had to join a federal court lawsuit before the State Department agreed to issue a passport in his legal name.       The problem? Keith took the surname of his longtime partner Al Toney after they were married in Massachusetts in March 2004. Keith had no problems changing his driver’s license, credit cards, and so

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-46629895925756282252010-05-10T12:59:00.006-04:002010-05-10T20:54:58.310-04:00

     Elena Kagan appears on a path toward Senate confirmation as the next Supreme Court justice, but her ability to move the court in the direction that President Obama hopes for remains to be seen. Indeed, her first effort in that regard failed.      In announcing his selection today (May 10), Obama stressed along with Kagan’s academic credentials (Princeton, Oxford, Harvard) her reputation as a

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-81820098930313056562010-05-03T11:22:00.002-04:002010-05-03T11:31:42.488-04:00

      Many Americans will gather in Washington and state capitals on Thursday [May 6] to observe the National Day of Prayer. Millions of others will take no notice of this 58-year-old tradition. But some number will take quiet offense that federal and state governments are lending their support to a religious practice in which they conscientiously do not believe.       Those in that relative

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-67960201874756535852010-04-26T16:42:00.002-04:002010-04-26T16:47:44.240-04:00

      In the world of high finance, top executives can walk away with seven- and eight-figure bonuses even after flushing their firms down the toilet. (Think, Bear Stearns; Lehman) But under a new Supreme Court decision, public interest lawyers who succeed in hard-fought federal civil rights suits are exceedingly unlikely to see any bonuses in the fee awards permitted under the law.       The

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-62170885486704087252010-04-20T11:06:00.004-04:002010-04-20T14:42:38.774-04:00

      The wages of the Bush administration’s deregulatory sins, which ran up to hundreds of billions in the financial services meltdown, may soon take a toll on the nation’s high-speed Internet customers. The big telephone and cable companies offering broadband services are now free to play favorites among content-providers — to the potential detriment of customers — unless policy decisions made

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-47455441700866211032010-04-14T11:14:00.003-04:002010-04-14T15:06:25.659-04:00

      As a federal appeals court judge in Chicago in the 1970s, John Paul Stevens sat on a case challenging political patronage — the long established practice of awarding government jobs on the basis of political affiliation. Stevens initially saw no grounds for a constitutional attack, but after research and argument wrote an opinion finding the practice a violation of First Amendment political

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-22883886261420210382010-04-05T09:05:00.003-04:002010-04-05T09:12:14.520-04:00

      Despite Justice John Paul Stevens’ professed indecision, Supreme Court watchers are nearly certain that the 89-year-old jurist is now in the final few months of his remarkable 34-year tenure on the high court. Even if the oddsmakers prove to be wrong, one can reflect now on Stevens’ strengths as a justice: hard work, careful analysis, and judicious decision-making free of ideological cant.

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-16105526537536857242010-03-29T09:30:00.003-04:002010-03-29T11:43:36.943-04:00

      The United States is fighting a remote control war with al Qaeda in Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas. CIA pilots, sitting at computer terminals in the United States, guide unmanned drones toward what they believe to be al Qaeda training camps or safe houses in an effort to kill leaders of the terrorist group with no risk to life or limb for U.S. personnel.       The Obama administration has

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-72513080816089090982010-03-22T13:51:00.002-04:002010-03-22T15:03:44.250-04:00

      With the historic health care reform bill not yet signed into law, opponents are already preparing to take the predictable next step to challenge the measure in court as unconstitutional. The litigation promised by attorneys general in 11 states will give opponents a new forum to register their disagreements, but the legal arguments appear to be clearly contradicted by Supreme Court

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-82181865588873973592010-03-15T15:48:00.002-04:002010-03-15T16:00:28.342-04:00

      Thurgood Marshall is best known as a liberal hero for fashioning the litigation strategy that led to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) outlawing racial segregation in public schools. Interestingly, Marshall’s best known argument a decade later as U.S. solicitor general is one that would have endeared him to conservatives: his failed effort in 1966

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-43113063259754657442010-03-08T10:56:00.003-05:002010-03-08T11:02:21.012-05:00

      Whatever happens to the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial or the Guantanamo prison camp, Attorney General Eric Holder is clearly a big loser on both issues inside the Beltway. Holder is being beaten up for his actions on the related fronts not only by Republicans and conservative but also by no less a figure than White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.       Emanuel has done nothing to

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-39732635778970827612010-02-28T15:33:00.003-05:002010-03-03T13:32:04.394-05:00

      What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States, constitutionally speaking? When the Supreme Court first considered that question, nearly 140 years ago, the justices decided, in effect, “Not much.”       Now, the Supreme Court is being asked, in the context of a gun rights case, to reconsider the cramped reading of U.S. citizenship announced in one of the court’s most controversial

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-72430808628580849122010-02-22T09:40:00.002-05:002010-02-22T09:44:23.515-05:00

      Marco Rubio, the hard-core conservative vying to become Florida’s next Republican senator, brought the house down at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week [Feb. 18] by calling for prosecuting terrorists in military tribunals instead of civilian courts. But the audience might not have been so enthusiastic if Rubio had told them the record since 9/11: nearly 200 al

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-42594884793906651252010-02-16T08:50:00.002-05:002010-02-16T10:23:27.567-05:00

    &nbspConstitutional law professor John Yoo is out promoting his new book and its stout defense of the need for a strong president in times of national emergencies. But the demonstrators in orange jump suits outside his recent appearance in Washington, D.C., were a reminder that Yoo’s thesis has an inevitable subtext: his authorship of the later-repudiated Justice Department memo claiming a

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-79803106543183479622010-02-08T08:53:00.002-05:002010-02-08T09:01:06.433-05:00

      When the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in schools in 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren tried to soften the impact of the ruling by giving local school systems time to comply. One year after the ruling, the court said in a follow-up that local school systems had to desegregate not immediately but “with all deliberate speed.”       The strategy paid off — for the segregationists.

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-26303517823225878232010-02-01T09:47:00.006-05:002010-02-02T13:18:02.802-05:00

      It seemed like a good idea at the time: trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 conspirators in a federal court in New York City. Let’s give the “worst of the worst” the best of American justice, only blocks away from Ground Zero.      But the Obama administration is retreating from the decision to hold KSM’s trial in Lower Manhattan after New York City Mayor Michael

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-19144586623486912222010-01-25T17:26:00.005-05:002010-01-25T17:38:04.070-05:00

      The Roberts Court’s decision to free corporations to spend unlimited amounts of their money in congressional and presidential campaigns is an undisputed instance of judicial activism and one of the least defensible in terms of judicial procedure, historical experience or public policy.      The Jan. 21 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission belatedly vindicates the

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-68129611617957539362010-01-18T21:29:00.003-05:002010-01-18T21:40:27.496-05:00

    &nbspThe Supreme Court’s conservatives showed their activist side last week when they stopped a federal judge from allowing limited Internet streaming of California’s same-sex marriage trial to several other courthouses in the country. Besides its extraordinary nature, the intervention also shows the habit of the Roberts Court majority of viewing policy-laden factual disputes through an

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-78872734272409298302010-01-11T15:29:00.001-05:002010-01-11T15:33:58.566-05:00

     The good will from President Obama’s inauguration lasted only as long as it took him to reaffirm his campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp on his second full day in the White House. One year out, national security law remains a political battlefield, with Republicans and conservatives mounting partisan attacks grounded more in ideology than in evidence or reason.      The

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-24934523398118353072009-12-13T22:26:00.002-05:002009-12-13T22:30:46.557-05:00

     Justice Antonin Scalia has a well developed capacity for indignation that he directs at any number of targets, including Congress, “living constitutionalists,” and international law advocates. But even long-time Scalia watchers seemed surprised early in the current Supreme Court term when Scalia chose Jewish war veterans for one of his signature from-the-bench outbursts.      Scalia

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-42154248047674117902009-10-08T11:54:00.007-04:002009-10-08T15:09:06.149-04:00

      John F. Kennedy promised during his 1960 presidential campaign to end racial discrimination in federally assisted housing “with the stroke of a pen,” but the author of Profiles in Courage waited almost two years to issue the promised executive order.       Bill Clinton promised during his 1992 campaign to end discrimination against gays in the military, but in office he backed away

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-16669402448249044272009-10-04T22:28:00.002-04:002009-10-04T22:33:22.943-04:00

      Hard cases make bad law. Consider one at the start of the Supreme Court’s new term that asks the justices to choose between protecting the First Amendment and preventing cruelty to animals.      Ten years ago, Congress passed a law making the “depiction of animal cruelty” a federal crime. The act was aimed at outlawing so-called “crush videos,” horrific depictions of women, often in high

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-22725937268651773432009-09-25T17:03:00.010-04:002009-09-25T17:24:38.030-04:00

      Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor presented herself during her Senate confirmation hearing as a judge’s judge, committed to following precedent and deciding cases strictly on the facts and law with no ideological agenda. In her courtroom debut on Sept. 9, Sotomayor appeared true to her confirmation persona with questions indicating a cautious approach to a major campaign finance case

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-67971468889355876152009-07-23T16:12:00.003-04:002009-07-29T09:48:00.162-04:00

      Midway through her opinion in the New Haven firefighters case, Judge Janet Bond Arterton wrote plaintively about the principal issue in the case: why white firefighters scored higher on the promotions exam in 2003 than their Hispanic or African-American colleagues. “The reasons for the testing disparities,” the federal judge wrote, “remain elusive.”       Thanks to the Supreme Court’s

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-13762467909217804692009-07-19T10:41:00.003-04:002009-07-20T12:59:36.191-04:00

      The Founding Fathers did not decide that the Supreme Court would have nine justices. That goes back to 1869. They did not decide that the court would begin each term on the first Monday in October. That goes back to 1917.      The Framers also did not decide that Supreme Court nominees would appear in front of a Senate committee before a vote on their confirmation. That practice goes back

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-12880669702251127002009-07-16T13:25:00.004-04:002009-07-17T09:41:17.742-04:00

      Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor now appears assured of confirmation by early August after surviving four days of Senate hearings with her qualifications acknowledged, her judicial record mostly unscathed and her personal character complimented even by Republican critics.      The Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee scheduled a meeting on Sotomayor’s confirmation for Tuesday (

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739125502680107097.post-42913119804889745692009-07-15T13:21:00.003-04:002009-07-17T11:42:50.693-04:00

      Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s second full day of reaffirming her commitment to objectivity while giving few clues about her views on disputed legal issues drew sharp criticism from Republican senators Wednesday but no complaints from Democrats.      Judiciary Committee Republicans made their sharpest criticism to date of Sotomayor after questioning her again about the “wise Latina

<b>Kenneth Jost</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/08130278447396616546noreply@blogger.com0