The short list to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court includes one name with a close Texas connection: Judge Diane Wood of the federal court of appeals seventh circuit in Chicago.
A New Jersey native, Wood moved to Houston during high school and went on to become Westchester High School's valedictorian. She later moved on to Austin, where she would complete both her undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Texas.
The Statesman had a story about her and, as you might expect, her former colleagues, professors and classmates describe someone who would appear to be a good fit for the nation's highest court.
"She was a terrific student, not only bright but cooperative and modest," recalled David Anderson, a UT law professor who taught Wood. "Some bright students are full of their brightness. She was not like that at all — she was very down to earth."
Of course, it is her Chicago connection that may help her in this particular instance. Wood became the third woman to ever teach at the University of Chicago Law School. Ten years later she was joined on the faculty by a recent Harvard Law graduate named Barack Obama. Perhaps in part due to their past, Wood was the first person President Obama interviewed last year for the vacancy caused by the retirement of Justice David Souter.
No one, aside from the President and his closest advisors, really knows where Diane Wood stands on the list. However, on a court filled with justices who learned the law in Cambridge and New Haven, it would be something of a change (and perhaps add a different perspective) to have a Supreme Court Justice who was educated in Austin, Texas.
It has been a Republican mantra for decades that private enterprise is more efficient than government. In 2005 President George W. Bush led the charge to privatize Social Security. Between the collapse of Enron and the banking system can you imagine where we'd be if he hadn't failed? When the same president led us into the war in Afghanistan his administration used private security contractors, mercenaries - many of whom are not American citizens, to provide security for supply convoys and military bases. When President Bush led us into the war in Iraq his administration further privatized the war effort by using mercenaries to protect state department personnel leading to the alleged atrocities by Blackwater guards at Nisour Square where 17 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed.
During that same period President Bush appointed two new members to the Supreme Court. Those two members recently joined with three other activist judges from the right in a decision that effectively privatizes the United States Congress and Presidency. The decision in the Citizens United vs. the FEC which allows corporations both domestic and foreign to effectively purchase federal elected officials could well be the most enduring legacy of the George W. Bush administration.
Populist activists from the right and left, like the Tea Party and MoveOn.org should make common cause to call for a constitutional convention as provided for by Article V of the U.S. Constitution to reverse this disastrous decision by amending our constitution.
Washington politicians and lobbyists are already lining up for a Supreme Court confirmation fight. The buzz words are flying fast. Their jargon is meant to rally activists for or against any nominee. As citizens, however, we need to take a step back and look at the issues more closely. Who is pushing for "big government"? Who wants less?
Conservatives will make the abortion debate at the center of the confirmation process. How much control should politicians have over a pregnant woman? The 1973 Supreme Court Case Roe v. Wade limited state and federal control. Ever since then, conservatives have been fighting to reinstitute a larger role for government.
Some Republicans also said a liberal nominee would pose risks for Senate Democrats representing conservative states.
"It puts a lot of pressure on Democrats in red states, particularly those running for re-election in 2010, if it is someone who is dramatically outside of the mainstream," said Mr. Cornyn, who, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has a deep interest in the politics of the nomination.
Cornyn's sentiment is predicated on the notion that the Chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee is deeply concerned with making sure that Democratic Senators get re-elected. Since any extremely competent, intelligent, accomplished, not-crazy-radical-drooling-over-their-gavel Supreme Court nominee that President Obama would see fit to pick should be confirmed - with only the most partisan of Republicans opposing any nominee no matter what ($100 says Hookerlover David Vitter votes nay - and I'm giving odds!) - Cornyn's trying reverse psychology to frighten President Obama into choosing a more centrist jurist than needbe. Because President Obama is sooooo frightened of Big, Bad John Cornyn.
I wrote about this back in October and it appears the Supreme Court will hear review on the appeal of the Texas voting rights case of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Mukasey (08-322).
SCOTUSBLOG states that this case is really going to boil down to what constitutional test the Court applies to this case if they do to determine if the law goes beyond Congress's legislative authority.
The Texas district urges the Court to apply the test the Justices have fashioned for judging Congress's authority to pass laws to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. The new case is largely a test under the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended voting rights to minority citizens. The District Court said the law is valid, whatever test is applied to its constitutionality.
This will be an interesting case especially regarding the "preclearance requirement" which requires that before any changes can be made for this select group of jurisdictions to their election laws without approval from DOJ or a three judge panel. In other words, have we moved past the years of voter rights violations and finally into an era where the clause is no longer valid.
My original entry is loaded with all the links to the details so I won't overload this entry with redundant information. There was good discussion back then by Baby Snooks and others.
(An important issue -- and our 7,000th diary on BOR! What a feat! - promoted by Phillip Martin)
While reviewing some of the cases slated for the 2008-2009 term of the US Supreme Court I came across what could be one of the biggest cases of this year's term. The case is Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Gonzales. This case is local to Texas and could have impact on an interesting facet of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Within the Voting Rights Act is a provision that forbids nine states and nearly six dozen counties with histories of racial voting discrimination from making changes to their election laws without receiving approval from the DOJ or a panel of three federal judges in Washington.
Wealthy people are entitled to more speech now. Scary thought. If you play by the rules in a campaign, you are actually hampered in your access to free speech unlike candidates that can self finance their campaign.
Today the Supreme Court ruled in Davis v. FEC and ruled the millionaire's amendment is unconstitutional. The amendment relaxes campaign finance limits for opponents of congressional candidates spending more than $350,000 of their own money, and the question was whether this violates either the First or Fifth Amendments.
In a move to try to even up the competition, Congress in 2002 adopted what has come to be known as the "Millionaire's Amendment." A candidate planning to use personal funds during the campaign must publicly disclose, 15 days after becoming a candidate, if he or she plans to spend more than $350,000 of personal money. If the candidate exceeds that amount in actual spending, periodic reports are due with the Federal Election Commission, the opposing candidate(s), and with each opponent's national political party.
Once a candidate spent $350,000.01 or more of their own money, their challenger was able to raise, $6,900. This was to increase parity between candidates who could self-finance and didn't have to go to donors and voters to plead their case. Today, the Supreme Court ruled wealthy people had greater access to speech.
What does the mean for Texas? Candidates like Mike McCaul can now write himself a huge check (his father is the man behind Clear Channel after all) and it won't raise the contribution limits for his Democratic opponent Larry Joe Doherty.
This has to make the Republican Party happier for having recruited so many millionaires to run. According to the NYT:
At this point, strategists for the National Republican Congressional Committee have enlisted wealthy candidates to run in at least a dozen competitive Congressional districts nationwide, particularly those where Democrats are finishing their first term and are thus considered most vulnerable. They say more are on the way.
In the same story from November of last year, two of the eight candidates who have given the most to their campaign, are Texas Republican challengers (both are former candidates who lost in the Republican Primary. Good use of funds).
The one upside of this ruling is it could be a victory for proponents of public financing (which may have a few more allies on the Hill, especially if Mitch McConnell loses). Every time someone gets a millionaire challenger, it may make them rethink the $2,300 campaign contribution limits they are tied to.
One thing is obvious, change comes from many voices, not just one loud one.
Update: A comment below makes a great point. This ruling could hurt Rep. John Culberson and help Democratic challenger Mike Skelley. Not sure yet if it changes any strategy on his part, but it definitely means Culberson's options are now to merely hope the district's preternatural GOP tilt holds up for him. No RNCC money for him. No Millionaire Amendment boost for him. He'll be lucky to get $2M in his bank account and already has demonstrated he's got a spending problem with his campaign cash. CD-7 may be the upside to the ruling, and CD-10 is likely to be only moderately effected.
In a 5-4 decision today (PDF) authored by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court has held that a Louisiana statute authorizing the death penalty for those who rape children is unconstitutional if the defendant's acts were not intended to cause death. In so doing, the Court determined that there was "a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape," and that expanding the death penalty to such crimes would be cruel and unusual.
More as it develops and/or with any reactions. I just saw this on CNN right now...
In the case of Boumediene v. Bush, issued on June 12, 2008, holding that the Guantanamo Bay detainees have a Constitutional right to file habeas corpus petitions in the courts of the United States to question the legality of their detentions, the majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States have done what we expect them to do in times of crisis for our Constitutional rule of law.
This decision will go down as one of those decisive moments in American history when a majority of the Justices realized they had to take stern action to preserve the Constitutional framework of the republic from an aberrant course. The decision is a dramatic repudiation of the whole purported legal edifice of the neocons. Under this ruling, neither George Bush nor any other American president may use threats to national security, either real or imagined, as an excuse to override the Constitution.
Under this ruling, neither George Bush nor any other American president may decide for himself or herself what the president's powers are without the constraint of our Constitutional checks and balances. Under this decision, the Magna Charta is rescued from the Bushite/neocon jackboot.
This decision dispels clouds of gloom. To all of us who have experienced so many discouraging moments during the awful neocon nightmare of recent years, this action of our nation's highest court is the kind of thing that tells us our system may still be capable of protecting us from tyranny. It is the kind of thing that says perhaps the neocon thugs will indeed all get their come-uppance before it's all said and done. It is the kind of transcendental event that restores hope and renders great cheer for all who love the promise of democracy and freedom that our national forebears proclaimed to a waiting world on July 4, 1776.
For a moment, we can allow ourselves to feel genuinely optimistic about how it is all going to finally turn out in the matter of the people vs. the neocons and Bushites. For just a moment, though. The Constitution survived a very close call by a very close margin, a 5-4 vote of the Justices. John Bush III McCain was quick to express disagreement with the decision. Senator Barack Obama agrees with the decision. Senator Obama is already on public record opposing the neocons' bankrupt theories of Constitutional law as expressed by the four dissenters, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. For the sake of my country and all it stands for, for the sake of all that its patriot sons and daughters have sacrificed down through the centuries and decades and years, for the sake of my children's right to grow up as free citizens of a Constitutional democracy, I want Barack Obama, not Bush III McCain, filling the next vacancies on the United States Supreme Court. I am going to put every possible effort I can into making that happen by winning the electoral votes of my state of Texas. I hope you all do the same.
"We close at five." It took these four words for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller to deny a convicted killer's last appeal. On September 25, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to a Kansas inmate questioning the constitutionality of lethal injection, Michael Richard was scheduled to be executed. The attorneys for the Texas Defenders Service requested that the court clerk's office remain open 20 minutes after the 5 p.m. closing time because their computers had crashed. Keller shocked the world by closing the court's office at 5 p.m. on an execution day without even consulting any of the other judges of the court. As a result, a man was executed without being able to have the merits of his last appeal considered by the criminal justice system.
