Judiciary
As I was driving around this morning, I heard from our corporate overlords on WPRO that RI Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was an “out of the box” candidate to fill the soon-to-be vacated Supreme Court seat currently held by Justice Stevens. Upon further research, it seems the idea was first floated by a contributor to the…
With their recommendations to President Obama to nominate local Democrat Party mega-donor lawyer Jack McConnell to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, we learn that Senators Reed and Whitehouse are proving to be unique evaluators of judicial talent. Apparently, McConnell has joined previous nominee O. Rogeriee Thompson as being one of the 4 nominees (out…
This from the court that blazed the path of determining that the word “marriage” can’t mean, in the law, what it’s always been known to mean: Matt Zubiel of Beverly was arrested in 2006 after driving to Marshfield to meet with the girl, who really was a Plymouth County Deputy Sheriff, authorities said. The next…
Something about this line of thinking, in an AP essay about the Supreme Court by Mark Sherman, doesn’t sit right: As in dozens of earlier cases, Kennedy was in the majority each time. He was the author of the campaign finance decision. The rulings demonstrate the extent to which ideology — not fidelity to precedent…
Another founding father of modern progressivism described in the series of National Review essays that I mentioned yesterday is Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose repercussions in modern jurisprudence Bradley Watson describes thus: There is a residual incoherence to the progressive jurisprudence that has followed Holmes. It alternates between two poles. On one hand, it expresses the…
With the judiciary as important as it is, and with those who typically populate its benches being, by nature, somewhat less prominent, in the public eye, than politicians, the Providence Journal‘s series of profiles of the five people whom the Judicial Nominating Commission has passed along to Governor Carcieri as candidates to fill a state…
Two points on an article about the RI judiciary’s declining to answer the governor’s request for further budget cuts: Overall, the courts brought in $25.2 million in fines in 2009, he said, $23 million of which went into the state’s general fund. This is entirely the wrong mindset for the judiciary. It isn’t meant to…
Michael McConnell uses a book review on the topic of judicial philosophy to bring forth an image of the new process for being confirmed to the Supreme Court: Sotomayor’s repudiation of the president’s empathy criterion raised eyebrows and not a few questions about her sincerity. But in truth her answer was a powerful tribute to…
President Obama has nominated O. Rogeriee Thompson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. This is the same Judge Thompson, who, as Bob Kerr recently explained, “granted continuance after continuance as [Pocahontas] Cooley claimed various physical ailments or requested additional evidence…” in Cooley’s attempt to take over former-boyfriend Paul Kelly’s home. (Justin…
I thought former Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Frank Williams’ role model was Abraham Lincoln, not Dwight Eisenhower.