Ricci Reversal Only Vindicates Judge Sotomayor
As Glenn Greenwald put it, in the first of four points about the ruling:
Does the State Have an Interest in Convicting the Innocent?
That is the question Matthew Yglesias asks about Thursday’s majority ruling by the Supreme Court in the case (pdf here, via Glenn) of a convicted rapist who sought to prove his innocence through DNA testing that was not available at the time of his trial:
Clarifying What Doesn’t Need to be Clarified
I’m very pleased to see that the Obama administration’s inexplicable decision to concede the right’s illegitimate “racist” argument is getting some well-deserved criticism in blogtopia:
If a White Male Were to Make Such Racist Comments, He Would Have His Own Radio Show
I have a blog post up at The Moderate Voice about implied gender bias in a New York Times article about supposed concerns among SCOTUS watchers that Sonia Sotomayor’s so-called “sharp tongue” and “blunt style” raise “temperament” issues.
Sonia Sotomayor
Over the next few days (weeks?) I will be attempting to round up and make some sense of the voluminous blogtopic response to Pres. Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The confirmation hearings will probably start in July, so that gives us all a little over a month to get up to speed.
Charlie Savage’s New York Times piece about the relative confusion surrounding Judge Sotomayor’s views on abortion is a good place to start. That aspect of Sotomayor’s background has not been written about as much as other aspects — and I figure it’s at least as important as a remark Sotomayor made at a conference in 2001 about how growing up female and Latina in impoverished circumstances might deepen the wisdom of her judicial decisions.
Savage includes links to Sotomayor’s abortion-related opinions (although none of them go directly to her views on Roe v. Wade), and also linked from the article is a separate page titled “Sotomayor’s Notable Opinions and Articles.”
SCOTUS Rejects Former Detainee’s Prison Abuse Suit, 5-4
From Adam Liptak’s New York Times article about the ruling:
Nine Questions for Mark Halperin
- Want some cheese with that whine?
- Why do white men buy into victimhood so much?
- In what language does two women on SCOTUS mean “white men need not apply”?
- Want some rinse with that spin?
- Why do you feel so threatened by smart, successful women?
- Does it bother you that two women on the Supreme Court might take bodily autonomy a bit too seriously?
- Why do you write, “White men need not apply”? Are you playing the race card?
- Will you feel better if Obama names a black man? Or does it have to be a white man for it to be an objective decision based on merit only?
- Are all white men as putzy as you are?
Wait! I already know the answer to that last one. Of course not! Only lonely dinosaurs like you.
Souter Replacement Watch Begins
Sam Stein at The Huffington Post has five strong possibilities and four dark horses.
David Souter Will Retire in June
NPR broke the news about two hours ago:
NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term.
The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction.
At 69, Souter is nowhere near the oldest member of the court. In fact, he is in the younger half of the court’s age range, with five justices older and just three younger. So far as anyone knows, he is in good health. But he has made clear to friends for some time that he wanted to leave Washington, a city he has never liked, and return to his native New Hampshire. Now, according to reliable sources, he has decided to take the plunge and has informed the White House of his decision.
Factors in his decision no doubt include the election of President Obama, who would be more likely to appoint a successor attuned to the principles Souter has followed as a moderate-to-liberal member of the court’s more liberal bloc over the past two decades.
In addition, Souter was apparently satisfied that neither the court’s oldest member, 89-year-old John Paul Stevens, nor its lone woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery over the winter, wanted to retire at the end of this term. Not wanting to cause a second vacancy, Souter apparently had waited to learn his colleagues’ plans before deciding his own.
Given his first appointment to the high court, most observers expect Obama will appoint a woman, since the court currently has only one female justice and Obama was elected with strong support from women. But an Obama pick would be unlikely to change the ideological makeup of the court.
Charges Dropped on Five Gitmo Detainees
The government is dropping the charges because the cases have been tainted by torture, and because the prosecution has deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense:
More Lies and Half-Truths on the Gitmo Decision
Let’s start with John Yoo, who declares in the Wall Street Journal that last week’s SCOTUS ruling is “judicial imperialism of the highest order.”
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