Tag Archives: Supreme Court

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Opening Argument – The Court’s Gone Too Far in Purging Religion From the Square

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

One way to get elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, it appears, is to thumb your nose at the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s how an obscure circuit judge named Roy S. Moore got the job in November 2000. Now Moore has made an even bigger splash by clownishly defying (until recently) federal court orders requiring removal of the 5,280-pound granite monument to the Ten Commandments that he had installed in the rotunda of the state judicial building.

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Center Court

by Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor got her job through affirmative action. It was obvious to officials in the Reagan Justice Department, as they searched for a Supreme Court justice in the summer of 1981, that she lacked the usual qualifications for the high court. "No way," Emma Jordan, an assistant to the then Attorney General William French Smith, recalls thinking. "There were gaps in her background where she had clearly been at home having babies. She had never had a national position. Under awar

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor got her job through affirmative action. It was obvious to officials in the Reagan Justice Department, as they searched for a Supreme Court justice in the summer of 1981, that she lacked the usual qualifications for the high court. "No way," Emma Jordan, an assistant to the then Attorney General William French Smith, recalls thinking. "There were gaps in her background where she had clearly been at home having babies. She had never had a national position. Under awards, she had something like Phoenix Ad Woman of the Year." No matter. President Reagan wanted to appoint the first woman justice, so he named O’Connor.

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Legal Affairs – Courting Trouble

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Conservative and liberal activists, lawyers, political junkies, and the media are abuzz with eager anticipation that this summer will bring the mother of all Senate confirmation battles, with the closely divided Supreme Court’s ideological balance at the tipping point. "It is almost certain," Time magazine forecast last month-with more confidence than evidence-"that by the end of June, when the Supreme Court adjourns for summer recess, at least one justice will have announced his or her retirement."

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Bush and the Supreme Court: Place Your Bets

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Amid all the liberal scare talk about how letting President Bush pack the courts with right-wing Neanderthals would end civilization as we know it, it’s worth noting that the first new Bush justice, if there are any, probably won’t make the Supreme Court more conservative, and may well make it more liberal.

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How the Supreme Court Hurts Moderate Politics

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

More than 90 percent of the nation’s voters will go (or not go) to the polls on November 5 knowing that, as far as the House of Representatives is concerned, the elections in their districts will be largely a symbolic exercise. The main reason is that the winners in most states have been predetermined by the state officials and party operatives who drew the congressional district lines.

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Holding Courts In Contempt

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

The federal court decision declaring the "under God" phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional caused an uproar. But it may also provide a window into a larger contempt for the judiciary that seems to be taking hold in George W. Bush’s Washington. The stormy legal battle after the 2000 presidential election, and the ever-nastier fights over nominations to the federal bench, risk eroding the courts’ standing among Democrats and Republicans alike. Discontent with the courts is particul

The federal court decision declaring the "under God" phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional caused an uproar. But it may also provide a window into a larger contempt for the judiciary that seems to be taking hold in George W. Bush’s Washington. The stormy legal battle after the 2000 presidential election, and the ever-nastier fights over nominations to the federal bench, risk eroding the courts’ standing among Democrats and Republicans alike. Discontent with the courts is particularly strong in the current White House, which views the judiciary with more disdain than any in recent history. Bush has made no secret of his desire to curb judicial power, and especially the courts’ role in reviewing his conduct in the war on terrorism.

The pledge case itself may turn out to be a minor distraction. California’s Ninth Circuit, one of the nation’s most liberal courts, is also one of the most overturned–and its pledge decision is almost certain to be reversed down the road. But lost in the tumult over the ruling was a simple fact that helps to illuminate the larger dissatisfaction with the courts: as much as the ruling overreached, the California court was clearly taking its cues from a higher authority–the U. S. Supreme Court.

The California judges’ condemnation of the words "under God" …

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Hurt Feelings Aren’t Enough of a Reason

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

"Why should I be made to feel like an outsider?" asked Mike Newdow, the California atheist who got two judges to declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, as he explained his litigious urges to The New York Times. After he’s finished stripping "under God" out of the Pledge, he hopes to rip "In God We Trust" off of our money. And he is itching to do something about the annoying proclivities of newly elected presidents to pray at their inaugurations.

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Legal Affairs – Enough Already! Confirm the Worthy Nominees

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

If you had to design the ideal candidate for an appellate judgeship, you might imagine a lawyer who wins praise from legal luminaries of both political parties as one of the nation’s very best appellate advocates. Someone who has argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court, who has a stellar track record in both private practice and government service, and who won the American Bar Association’s highest rating. Someone who has represented clients on both the conservative side and the liberal side of ideologically charged cases, and who has encountered no plausible criticism of his fitness to serve.

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Legal Affairs – The Last True Believer in Judicial Restraint

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Justice Byron R. White’s former law clerks remember him not as one of his generation’s greatest football players, but as one of its sharpest legal minds. He was, some say, the smartest person they ever met. Yet in 31 years on the Supreme Court, the most gifted scholar-athlete of his time made far less conspicuous a mark on the law than colleagues with far less potent intellects. One reason was the inelegant, cryptic, often-confusing writing style of the brusque, no-nonsense White. Another was a virtue now very much out of vogue: his modesty in the exercise of judicial power.