Prior to his presidency, Senator Obama famously announced that empathy would be his criteria for selecting judges. Although Sonia Sotomayor deemphasized her empathetic understanding of the law, many on the left still advocate empathy as the criteria for judges. James Gibson is no exception. In a recent article, “Expecting Justice and Hoping for Empathy,” Gibson discusses his recent survey that revealed 68% of polled individuals strongly agree with the statement that justices should “Be able to empathize with ordinary people – that is, to be able understand how the law …
Take good care of your current car. Given what the proposed Environmental Protection Agency/Department of Transportation regulations are going to do to new vehicles, you may want to hang on to it for as long as possible. Pursuant to federal law as well as a 2007 Supreme Court case, these two agencies have proposed a sharp increase in vehicle fuel economy. The proposal requires a 5 percent annual increase in fuel economy starting with the 2012 model year, reaching 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. Note that this would be …
Live reader chat with Robert Alt on Sotomayor and the Court
Writing in Forbes yesterday, the Goldwater Institute’s Clint Bolick argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ricci v. DeStafano should result in renewed attention to education reform and the need to improve educational opportunities for all people: “[The ruling] also brought the nation closer to an important day of reckoning. When blacks and Hispanics flunk examinations, the cause is less likely to be discrimination than the appalling educational conditions to which most economically disadvantaged black and Hispanic children are consigned. “Affirmative action” programs that leap-frog less-qualified minorities over more-qualified non-minorities …
Sometimes judicial activism isn’t about who wins the case. It may be that the Supreme Court got it right today when it ruled that school officials violated the constitutional rights of 13-year-old Savana Redding when they ordered her to shake out her underwear to see if she was hiding more of the prescription pain pills found on a schoolmate. But one thing it didn’t do is provide any kind of guidance for school officials who now face the prospect of liability for violating this new rule… whatever it is. This …
Issues Facing Latino Judiciary symposium sponsored by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, October 2001: I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life. Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, “to judge is an exercise of power” and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states “there is no objective stance …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfC99LrrM2Q&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] Follow Heritage’s continuing coverage of the Sonia Sotomayor nomination to the Supreme Court.
Robert Bork at Heritage / Photo by Andrew Blasko Former judge Robert Bork delivered the first lecture in Heritage’s Joseph Story Distinguished Lecture series that is a part of a larger 10-year initiative started by the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies to bring back judicial restraint and the rule of law. The title of Bork’s lecture was aptly named, “A Republic — If You Can Keep It.” It was taken from a quote by Benjamin Franklin when asked what the Founding Fathers were giving to the American people when …
