Judiciary
The Washington Post has the first round of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse‘s questioning of Judge Sonia Sotomayor available at their website. Ed Whelan of National Review Online notes that the exchange concerning Judge Sotomayor’s involvement with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense fund contradicts what was reported in the New York Times earlier this year. This is…
I think a Rhode Island Tea Party member needs to drop a copy of the United States Constitution off at the office of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, because the Senator seems stunningly unfamiliar with its content. This is part of what Senator Whitehouse had to say during his opening remarks at Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court…
The United States Supreme Court has held, in various rulings, that the Fourteenth Amendment extends the Federal Constitution to state governments, prohibiting states from violating the limitations on government action expressed in the Bill of Rights. In June of 2008, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled that the…
Writes the RI Supreme Court majority in the case of William Irons and the Ethics Commission: “We wish to stress in the strongest possible terms, however, that it in no way grants a legislator the right to transgress the Code of Ethics or any other law,” the majority wrote. Unprotected actions include political activities, efforts…
The Rhode Island Supreme Court has managed to take away one of the RI Ethics Commission’s big sticks: The Rhode Island Supreme Court has upheld a lower-court ruling on behalf of former Senate President William V. Irons, saying that state legislators cannot be prosecuted by the state Ethics Commission for their votes or official legislative…
Kristin Rodgers, now confirmed to the Superior Court, has an admirable background suggestive of the possibility that, in a world of judicial activism, Anchor Rising readers should prefer her to most others. But still: In remarks to those gathered in the Senate chamber, Sen. John F. McBurney III, D-Pawtucket, whose father was a state senator,…
In one case, anyway. The Rhode Island Supreme Court on Friday overturned rulings by the Family Court that had allowed a divorced woman and her two children to remain in Rhode Island for almost seven years despite an order from a North Carolina judge that they return to that state, where the children’s father lived.…
By now you should have read yesterday’s front-page advertisement for the Gaspee Tea Party rally in the Providence Journal. I’m referring to the article on big-money state pensions that Monique mentioned last night. Most of the article is a series of revelations that make one wish for something symbolic (but not harmful) to tip over…
David Brooks’s recent column on judicial empathy is a wonderful example of the method by which moderates enable liberals. He begins with a strawman that in no way bears scrutiny: The American legal system is based on a useful falsehood. It’s based on the falsehood that this is a nation of laws, not men; that…
If, like me, you’ve mainly viewed Sonia Sotomayor as a sort of Hispanic-hued less-undangerous-than-you’d-like nominee for Supreme Court, Ed Whelan might push you over the edge to full opposition: Sotomayor complains that “the public fails to appreciate the importance of indefiniteness in the law.” But beyond pointing out the uncontroversial fact that some indefiniteness is…
