NINOMANIA
:: A constitutional law blog by Scalia/Thomas fan David M. Wagner, M.A., J.D., Research Fellow, National Legal Foundation, and Teacher, Veritas Preparatory Academy. Opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect those of the NLF or Veritas. :: bloghome | E-mail me ::
:: Thursday, September 27, 2007 ::
Drudge dishes on text of Justice Thomas's 60 Minutes interview this coming Sunday. On Anita Hill:She did not take slights very kindly and anyone who did anything, she responded very quickly," he says. When Kroft rejoins, "Didn't take 10 years?" Thomas replies, "It didn't take 10 minutes."
:: David M. Wagner 5:04 PM [+] ::
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:: Saturday, September 22, 2007 ::
Slate reviews the reviews of Toobin's the The Nine, including one by my Facebook friend and blogrollee David Lat.
:: David M. Wagner 11:38 AM [+] ::
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:: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 ::
Mukasey nomination: If this were the start of the administration, I might want someone who doesn't carry the burden of a Nan Aron and a Chuck Schumer recommendation. For a Supreme Court appointment, I certainly would. But for a short seat as AG, I support this nomination -- if only for the way Judge Mukasey once faced down Bill Kunstler:William M. Kunstler, a lawyer for one of the Muslim defendants in the 1993World Trade Center bombing, asked Mukasey to recuse himself from the case because he is Jewish. Kunstler accused the judge and his wife of having ties to Israel that would influence his opinions. In his official response, Mukasey wrote that "to respond to such inquiries is to concede the relevance of the information" to the way he might rule from the bench.
I can't say the same for some of his erstwhile supporters. From the same Washington Post article:"He's not an ideologue for the sake of being an ideologue," said Andrew Ruffino, a former law clerk of the nominee's.
Yes, I'm sure a lot of people will recognize themselves in that: got up one morning, said to heck with first principles, let's just be ideologues for the sake of being ideologues! Way to understand the other side, Andrew! Then this:Said Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor who was a classmate of Mukasey's: "He is not a hyper-charged Federalist Society type. He is not a glad-hand networker."
So that's what the Federalist Society is all about: caffeine and rope lines! The academic conferences are just window-dressing, then, and all the A-list liberals who come to them are dupes...!
:: David M. Wagner 12:08 PM [+] ::
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:: Friday, September 14, 2007 ::
L'affaire Chemerinsky: what is UC Irvine thinking of? Obviously I don't care for Chemerinsky's advocacy, but on the deanship, federal prosecutor and potential UC Irvine Law faculty recruit Laurie Levenson has it exactly right:"If there's room for Ken Starr and John Eastman to be the dean of a law school, there's room for Erwin Chemerinsky," Levenson said, referring to the conservative constitutional scholars who are deans at the Pepperdine and Chapman law schools, respectively.
:: David M. Wagner 5:53 PM [+] ::
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:: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 ::
Is your religious readling list BOP-approved?
:: David M. Wagner 10:17 AM [+] ::
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:: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 ::
New book says Souter almost resigned after Bush v. Gore
If accurate, this means that a lifelong Republican, appointed by a Republican president, was "shattered" that a decision by his Court recognized the election of a Republican president (who happened to be the son of the one who appointed him).
Evidently Mr. Toobin's book is written for the kind of people who find Bush v. Gore not only wrong (lots of Supreme Court decisions are wrong) but so outrageously earth-shakingly regime-threateningly wrong that the only question to be asked is the state of one's emotional health in its aftermath.
Funny -- I know a lot of people who have other Supreme Court decisions to put in that category, but not Bush v. Gore. In fact, they tend to be decisions in which Justice Souter had a hand.
I also recall that when a group of public intellectuals wrote in First Things about the outrageous earth-shaking regime-threatening wrongness of certain other decisions, notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey, certain people were likewise "shattered" -- not at Casey, but at the fact of commentators questioning (quite that sharply) the Court. I hope those same people won't worry too much about Justice Souter's implied criticism of his colleagues. I don't think they will.
Are there other instances of a Justice being "shattered" by a result of the Court? Mr. Justice Frankfurter suffered a stroke shortly after Baker v. Carr, and had to retire. Baker, of course, began the mainstreaming of the idea that the Equal Protection Clause applies to voting -- an idea that led, ultimately, to the majority holding in Bush v. Gore....
:: David M. Wagner 5:35 PM [+] ::
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She did not take slights very kindly and anyone who did anything, she responded very quickly," he says. When Kroft rejoins, "Didn't take 10 years?" Thomas replies, "It didn't take 10 minutes."
:: David M. Wagner 5:04 PM [+] ::
...
:: David M. Wagner 11:38 AM [+] ::
...
William M. Kunstler, a lawyer for one of the Muslim defendants in the 1993World Trade Center bombing, asked Mukasey to recuse himself from the case because he is Jewish. Kunstler accused the judge and his wife of having ties to Israel that would influence his opinions. In his official response, Mukasey wrote that "to respond to such inquiries is to concede the relevance of the information" to the way he might rule from the bench.I can't say the same for some of his erstwhile supporters. From the same Washington Post article:
"He's not an ideologue for the sake of being an ideologue," said Andrew Ruffino, a former law clerk of the nominee's.Yes, I'm sure a lot of people will recognize themselves in that: got up one morning, said to heck with first principles, let's just be ideologues for the sake of being ideologues! Way to understand the other side, Andrew! Then this:
Said Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor who was a classmate of Mukasey's: "He is not a hyper-charged Federalist Society type. He is not a glad-hand networker."So that's what the Federalist Society is all about: caffeine and rope lines! The academic conferences are just window-dressing, then, and all the A-list liberals who come to them are dupes...!
:: David M. Wagner 12:08 PM [+] ::
...
"If there's room for Ken Starr and John Eastman to be the dean of a law school, there's room for Erwin Chemerinsky," Levenson said, referring to the conservative constitutional scholars who are deans at the Pepperdine and Chapman law schools, respectively.
:: David M. Wagner 5:53 PM [+] ::
...
:: David M. Wagner 10:17 AM [+] ::
...
If accurate, this means that a lifelong Republican, appointed by a Republican president, was "shattered" that a decision by his Court recognized the election of a Republican president (who happened to be the son of the one who appointed him).
Evidently Mr. Toobin's book is written for the kind of people who find Bush v. Gore not only wrong (lots of Supreme Court decisions are wrong) but so outrageously earth-shakingly regime-threateningly wrong that the only question to be asked is the state of one's emotional health in its aftermath.
Funny -- I know a lot of people who have other Supreme Court decisions to put in that category, but not Bush v. Gore. In fact, they tend to be decisions in which Justice Souter had a hand.
I also recall that when a group of public intellectuals wrote in First Things about the outrageous earth-shaking regime-threatening wrongness of certain other decisions, notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey, certain people were likewise "shattered" -- not at Casey, but at the fact of commentators questioning (quite that sharply) the Court. I hope those same people won't worry too much about Justice Souter's implied criticism of his colleagues. I don't think they will.
Are there other instances of a Justice being "shattered" by a result of the Court? Mr. Justice Frankfurter suffered a stroke shortly after Baker v. Carr, and had to retire. Baker, of course, began the mainstreaming of the idea that the Equal Protection Clause applies to voting -- an idea that led, ultimately, to the majority holding in Bush v. Gore....
:: David M. Wagner 5:35 PM [+] ::
...
