There are positive and negative aspects to today’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in Graham v. Florida that it is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile non-homicide offender to life without the possibility of parole. On the positive side, the Court upheld the constitutionality of life without parole (LWOP) for juvenile killers. Over 90% of juveniles serving LWOP are murderers, so this ruling won’t affect them at all. That means that the 1200 or so juvenile killers serving LWOP got no relief from this case. Furthermore, states can continue to sentence appropriate …
Elena Kagan may be hostile to the view that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution protects American’s individual right to keep and bear arms. Bloomberg reports today, “Kagan Was ‘Not Sympathetic’ as Law Clerk to Gun-Rights Argument.” With the evidence presented by the Los Angeles Times that Kagan was very active in the gun control agenda during her time as counsel for the President Bill Clinton Administration, a thorough examination of Kagan’s views on the 2nd Amendment is merited. Bloomberg Reports that “Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court …
President Obama’s nominated Solicitor General of the United States, Elena Kagan to be justice on the Supreme Court yesterday. Kagan has no judicial experience and a scant record of writing, but Kagan did express a very illuminating opinion concerning the Senate’s confirmation process. In a book review of “The Confirmation Mess” by Stephen L. Carter in the Spring of 1995, Elena Kagan wrote: When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in a meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the …
According to multiple sources, at 10 am today President Barack Obama will announce his decision to name Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Kagan, who served as the Dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009, would be the first justice without judicial experience in almost 40 years. But this does not mean she is in any way a stranger to the Senate confirmation process. In fact, in 1995 she authored an article on judicial confirmations for the University of Chicago Law Review where she wrote: The …
This summer, the United States Senate will make one of the most solemn determinations within our constitutional system – whether to confirm a president’s nominee to a lifetime of service on the United States Supreme Court. When considering a nominee for the vacancy created by Justice John Paul Stevens’ retirement, the Senate must determine whether the nominee will demonstrate an unfailing fidelity to the text of the Constitution and proper restraint against the temptation to expand judicial power. United States Supreme Court vacancies are not to be filled with symbols …
Do you remember Anna Nicole Smith? The Playboy model died from a drug overdose back in 2007, but the litigation over her late husband J. Howard Marshall’s estate lived on. After forum shopping for a friendly venue and multiple appeals that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court (where Anna Nicole’s appearance at oral arguments was widely covered by the press), recent decisions from the federal appeals court in California hearing the case suggest that it is finally coming to a close: her husband’s estate plan, which …
