Blog
All Blogs
-
June 30, 2010 9:58 pm | By Miranda Blue
“A Judicial Philosophy that Keeps Faith with the Constitution”: Our Endorsement of Kagan
Here at PFAW, we were all eager to hear what Elena Kagan had to say in this week’s hearings, and have spent the past two days in the Senate hearing room or glued to CSPAN 3 listening to her testimony.…
-
June 30, 2010 9:14 pm | By Miranda Blue
Whose Freedom?
After debating 1776, we move on to a conversation about 1980.In his long complaint about the Commerce Clause, Sen. Coburn declared that Americans had more freedom 30 years ago than we do now.Sen. Klobuchar then took the floor, and brought…
-
June 30, 2010 9:11 pm | By Miranda Blue
Constitutional Fidelity, Except for the Other Stuff
First, Sen. Tom Coburn railed against Solicitor General Kagan for her refusal to agree to his skewed and narrow vision of the original intent of the Constitution.Then he switched tacks to rail against her for not subscribing to a view…
-
June 30, 2010 8:49 pm | By Kyle
Dreaming Of What Might Have Been Had Boykin Testifed At Kagan’s Hearing
Last week we noted that Senate Republicans had put Gen. Jerry Boykin on their list of witnesses to testify against Elena Kagan during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, seemingly unaware of just how radically right-wing his views were. Sadly, they…
-
June 30, 2010 4:51 pm | By Drew Courtney
Senator Hatch Defends Citizens United
During his second round of questioning, Senator Hatch again spent a significant amount of time defending the Court’s ruling in Citizens United. I won’t go into a long explanation of why the decision is wrong (as we’ve done several times…
-
June 30, 2010 4:26 pm | By Rhee-Soo
Thurgood Marshall Roundup
We were far from the only ones noting the surprising volume of GOP attacks on Justice Thurgood Marshall on Monday. Talking Points Memo counted the number of references to the illustrious Justice on the opening day of Kagan’s hearings: In…
-
June 30, 2010 4:24 pm | By Rhee-Soo
Franken on Rent-A-Center and Forced Arbitration
Senator Al Franken’s questioning included a reference to the recent decision in Rent-A-Center v. Jackson, which was particularly well explained. He applauded Gen. Kagan’s comment from yesterday, where she said that the Court should provide equal access to everyone. However,…
-
June 30, 2010 3:19 pm | By Kyle
The Kagan “Smoking Gun”? Hardly
It seems that the Right is all agog over this article in the "National Review" by Shannen Coffin, claiming that Elena Kagan "manipulated the statement of a medical organization to protect partial-birth abortion" while working in the Clinton White House.…
-
June 30, 2010 3:13 pm | By Miranda Blue
Not Activism, Patriotism
[Thurgood Marshall] taught us all what it means to love our country enough to work to make it a little better, a little stronger and a little closer to what it's supposed to be. That's not activism. That's patriotism.Stephanie Jones’…
-
June 30, 2010 3:11 pm | By Miranda Blue
Kagan: Judges Have to Exercise Judgment
Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked Solicitor General Kagan this morningwhat she thinks of Chief Justice Roberts famous “balls and strikes” metaphor of judging. Kagan answered that the metaphor is correct in that judges have to be neutral and fair, and “realize…
-
June 29, 2010 10:54 pm | By Miranda Blue
Coburn Wants the Supreme Court to Stop Congress from Spending
Senator Tom Coburn just launched an . . . interesting line of questioning against Elena Kagan, claiming that the Supreme Court has a broad mandate to stop Congress from running up a national debt. SCOTUSblog’s initial notes of Coburn’s statement:…
-
June 29, 2010 10:01 pm | By Rhee-Soo
Outdated Stereotypes and Gender-Based Discrimination in Flores-Villar v. United States
On Monday, People For the American Way Foundation signed on to an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit’s decision to enforce a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that imposes a greater residency requirement…
-
June 29, 2010 9:22 pm | By Kyle
Any Group With Just 15% Support Should Not Be Calling Anyone an “Ideologue”
Outside of the incessant Twittering of the Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino, I haven’t seen much commentary from the Right on Elena Kagan’s hearing today … and the few things I have seen have tended to be along the line of this…
-
June 29, 2010 9:09 pm | By Rhee-Soo
RNC v. FEC: Court Decides Against Soft Money, But Barely
As Miranda reported back in May, the Citizens United decision mobilized its proponents in the direction of securing more rights under the First Amendment. The specific target? Soft money contributions. In the case, RNC v. FEC, the RNC and several…
-
June 29, 2010 8:52 pm | By Miranda Blue
Justice Thomas, Activist
Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog has done an impressive analysis of the Supreme Court’s decisions this term, and found several surprising results. Among these is pretty clear evidence that Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the most conservative Justices on the court,…
-
June 29, 2010 8:35 pm | By Rhee-Soo
Kagan Defends Marshall
As we and others have noted, many Republican Senators have adopted the perplexing tactic of attacking Kagan’s strong ties to civil rights giant and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Today, Kagan masterfully defended Justice Marshall’s judicial philosophy against Senator Kyl’s…
-
June 29, 2010 5:55 pm | By Miranda Blue
Sessions: Citizens United was just like Brown v. Board!
You do have to feel for the big corporations who were being discriminated against before the Supreme Court decided they could spend unlimited amounts of money in elections, right? Jeff Sessions, for one, is standing up for corporate underdogs who…
-
June 29, 2010 4:48 pm | By Rhee-Soo
Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB: The Pro-Corporation Court Strikes Again
Yesterday, the Supreme Court held that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s mechanism for removing its officers violated the constitution. Formed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in response to the Enron scandal, the PCAOB has been challenged since its inception. Today’s…
-
June 29, 2010 4:34 pm | By Drew Courtney
Kyl and Activism
John Kyl says that senators have been talking about the “alleged activism” of the current Court.I think we can just go ahead and call it “activism.”
-
June 29, 2010 3:41 pm | By Deborah Liu
Hatch Misses the Point
Senator Hatch spent most of his allotted questioning time trying to refute what he called “misstatements” by critics of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. Particularly, he tried to defuse claims that the decision permits foreign corporations to heavily…