Tag Archives: Category: Bench and Bar

Doe v. Boland, No. 09-4281 (6th Cir. Jan. 19, 2011)

“Dean Boland downloaded images of children from a stock photo website, digitally ‘morphed’ them into pornography, then used the images to help his clients resist child pornography charges in federal and state courts . . . the parents of the depicted children found out about the exhibits, prompting them to sue Boland under the civil remedy provisions of the federal child pornography statute.”

Wall Street Journal: “As the shooting starts, the video shows Judge Roll pushing another man, Rob Barber, onto the ground, Mr. Nanos said. ‘It looks to us as though he is pushing against Ron Barber to move him out of the way.’ Both men fall to the ground; both are shot. The judge was shot in the back and died.”

ADF attorney Jordan Lorence writing at Speak Up Movement / University: “The Washington Post is reporting on a recent study of humor at the Supreme Court. Yes, humor does happen at the Supreme Court! . . . My one argument at the Supreme Court resulted in the [Laughter] designation appearing in the transcript. I argued the Southworth case against the University of Wisconsin in 1999. This was a case about students objecting to the University’s requirement that all students pay a fee that would fund private campus groups that advocated ideas the contributors disagree with.”

Life to Death: Our Constitution and How It Grow
44 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 391 (2010)

“[T]he Constitution is a ‘living’ document that primarily guarantees rights and privileges to the inhabitants of contemporary America, rights and privileges that may expand as our nation continues to develop. For those of us who believe in a ‘living’ Constitution, the Constitution itself is much more than a mere historical text to be parsed for its literal, original meaning . . .”

New Jersey News Room: “Noteworthy is the nomination of Sohail Mohammed of Clifton to a Superior Court judgeship in Passaic County. Mohammed was counsel to many detainees picked up by federal authorities in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks. Mohammed gained the respect of authorities for trying to improve communications between them and the Muslim community after Sept. 11, 2001.”

ABC: “The Ohio Supreme Court on January 11 said Griffin lacked a ‘feasible plan to satisfy his financial obligations.’ Griffin’s debts include $150,000 from law school, $20,000 from his undergraduate studies and $16,500 in credit card debt.”

SCOTUSblog: “This morning, the Court released its order list. The Court granted certiorari in three cases, appearing below, limited to the first question presented by the petitions.  The Court consolidated the cases and allotted one hour for oral argument.”

The Columbus Dispatch: “A doctor says the Ohio Supreme Court caved to political considerations when it refused to hear an appeal of a malpractice case against him, noting that the lawyer on the other side had supported the campaign of then-Chief Justice Eric Brown.”

The Hill: “With a federal district judge in Florida expected to rule this month on a challenge to a key provision in the healthcare reform law, more than 100 legal scholars are defending its constitutionality. The legal scholars are joining with the left-leaning Center for American Progress and American Constitution Society on Tuesday to voice their belief that the reform law’s requirement for individuals to purchase health insurance is constitutional.”

Tennessean: “Tennessee’s highest-ranking judges don’t want to run for elected office statewide to keep their jobs, but many of those same members of the judiciary give heavily to the campaigns of politicians who could help decide the fate of Tennessee judicial elections.”

Des Moines Register: “The Iowa Supreme Court’s four justices, who face an increased workload after voters ousted three colleagues, will release their first batch of opinions in 2011 in February. In a typical January, the court releases between eight and 10 rulings, said Iowa state courts spokesman Steve Davis. The court is scheduled to release a round of opinions on Feb. 3.”

Radio Iowa: “The chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court has agreed to meet with one of the state’s leading critics of the court’s gay marriage ruling. Chuck Hurley of a group that recently changed its name to The FAMiLY Leader says he’ll ask the chief justice to ‘pray and search his heart’ and Hurley says he’s confident the justice will then resign.”

“Absolutely not. That decision was crafted with all of the energy, all of the strength — everything that we do as judges is in that opinion,” Cady said. “Everything that Iowa is about is in that opinion.”

“The death of a female partner of Cozen O’Connor has put the law firm in the center of a dispute over a cutting-edge same-sex marriage issue—whether a marriage that is legal in one jurisdiction should be recognized as valid in another in which the parties would not have a right to wed.”

Law.com / National Law Journal: “The Law School Admissions Test is a rite of passage for aspiring lawyers, but could go from mandatory to voluntary under proposed changes to the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation standards.”

The Rise of Lawfare, the Politicization of International Law and the Challenges to U.S. Sovereignty

Sunday, January 16, 2011

10:30 am – 1:30 pm (PDT); 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm (EDT)

Washington Post: “Now that his spot on the bench is empty, the best tribute to Roll would be to fill it quickly – along with all the other empty federal judgeships across the country – and to give the federal courts more of the resources they so desperately need . . . It was Roll’s concern for his overwhelmed court that had him talking to staffers for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords when a gunman started shooting, according to an FBI statement.”

Des Moines Register: “The Iowa Supreme Court held oral arguments Thursday for the first time since three of its members were voted out of office.”

NJ.com: “Sen. Richard Codey is calling on the state Supreme Court to begin disciplinary proceedings against Associate Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto in hopes the controversial jurist will be removed from the bench.”

CNN Money / Fortune: “Tapes of Roberts’ arguments before the Court — he delivered 39 of them — bear out what numerous contemporaries recount: He seemed to anticipate every question, and responded instantly in complete, grammatical sentences salted with down-to-earth analogies and an occasionally wicked wit . . . With good health, Roberts could surpass Marshall’s record as the longest-serving Chief Justice (34 years) in March 2040 . . . ‘He’s going to go down as an absolutely historic figure,’ predicts Goldstein, who co-heads the litigation department at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and is also the publisher of SCOTUSblog.com.”

Cincinnati.com: “A federal judge ordered Hamilton County election officials on Wednesday to count more than 150 disputed ballots in the race for juvenile court judge – more than enough to potentially change the outcome.”

NJ.com: “But now Rivera-Soto says he will vote on cases where Stern does not affect the outcome. That includes situations like the decision on a property dispute released Wednesday, where the vote was 6-1 vote — with Rivera-Soto dissenting.”

Des Moines Register: The former Republican candidate for governor insisted his 11-week statewide tour isn’t intended to focus solely on same-sex marriage. The purpose is to introduce Iowans to the Family Leader – a new umbrella advocacy group that Vander Plaats leads and that includes the Iowa Family Policy Center – and to build statewide support for all “pro-family” government policies, from restricting abortion to fostering economic growth to limiting government, he said.

Des Moines Register: “Rep. Rich Anderson, R-Clarinda, said he personally believes that the justices’ actions in issuing a ruling that in effect legalized same-sex marriage do not meet the standard for impeachment spelled out in the Iowa Constitution: ‘misdemeanor or malfeasance in office.’ The court ruled that an Iowa law limiting marriage to a man and a woman was unconstitutional.”

Charleston Daily Mail: “Tomblin, who is acting governor by virtue of being Senate president, contends that state law allows him to serve until the next general election. But in separate lawsuits, Citizen Action Group and Charleston attorney Thornton Cooper both say the state constitution – which overrides any state law – was not written with such a long period of service by a Senate president in mind.”

Des Moines Register: “Iowa Supreme Court Justice Mark Cady warned lawmakers today that attacks on the judiciary based on misunderstandings poses a threat to the checks-and-balances system that protects individual rights.” | More from the Sioux City Register here.

Chicago Tribune: “Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady says justices realized they would unleash a fury when they struck down a law in 2009 banning same-sex marriage.”

Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput: “Roll was devoted to St. Thomas More and kept a biography of the saint on a table near his desk. He liked mentoring young Christian attorneys because he believed their faith gave them a better moral foundation for the vocation of law . . . This life passes. Eternity is forever. We need to act in this world accordingly, with lives of Christian service. Maureen and John Roll shared a life of quiet, powerful, authentic Catholic witness. Please keep them both, and the entire Roll family, in your prayers.”

Ilya Somin writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to hear United States v. Alderman, a potentially important Commerce Clause case [HT: Josh Blackman]. In Alderman, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld the constitutionality of a federal statute that banned the possession of body armor by felons.”

New York Times Editorial: “It is unlikely that Iowa’s Democratic-controlled Senate would go along with removing the judges, but an impeachment trial would be disruptive and intentionally intimidating. The nation’s democracy and cherished rights rely on keeping court decision-making above the fickle tugs of ordinary politics. Ousting judges to register disagreement with a particular court decision is a dangerous road to go down.”

Des Moines Register: “Sixty-one people – including two who have spoken publicly about gay marriage – have applied to replace the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were voted off the bench in November.”

“Some Republicans said afterward they felt more passionate about removing the remaining Supreme Court justices because of Cady’s speech.”

In addition to Judge Roll, who was known and loved by a number of ADF team members, we would like to extend our prayers to others killed, including Christina Green, Gabriele Zimmerman, Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck, and Dorwin Stoddard, and their family members. We would also like to extend our prayers to the Tucson victims who were injured, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and the 18 others who we injured in the shooting, as well as their families.

George Leef has this post at National Review Phi Beta Cons: “One commenter asks whether lawyers really need to go to law school at all. Prior to the ABA’s big push in the 1920s for “higher standards,” most lawyers had not gone to law school, and many of the law schools then in existence had programs lasting less than three years.”

The Atlanta Post: “But with so many students coming out of school with six-figure debts and lack of opportunities, the timing is right to reassess the value of a law school education.”

Gonzaga University: “Jane B. Korn, vice dean and the John D. Lyons Professor at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, has been hired as dean of the Gonzaga University School of Law effective July 1, Gonzaga President Thayne M. McCulloh announced today. Korn becomes the Law School’s first female dean. . .”

ADF attorney Matt Bowman writes at National Review Bench Memos: “It’s hard to describe the virtues of Chief Judge John Roll without making him sound too good to be true. I think that’s because he really was as good as all of us wish we could be, but know we so often aren’t. I would say he displayed “heroic” virtue — not necessarily heroic in the dramatic sense, but in the much more difficult sense of living excellence in every hour throughout each day with everyone he encountered.”

Southern California Appellate News: “Using the same resources, I’ve compiled possible successors to Justice Carlos Moreno. I’ve already introduced five of them, with extended bios. The complete Short List is her . . . ”

Charisma: Alliance Defense Fund President, CEO, and General Counsel Alan Sears spoke directly to the shooting death Chief Judge John McCarthy Roll of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. “Chief Judge Roll was a great lawyer, sound jurist, and a long-time friend. Our hearts are deeply grieved over this tragedy,” says Alliance Defense Fund President, CEO, and General Counsel Alan Sears regarding the shooting death Chief Judge John McCarthy Roll of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. “His untimely death is a huge loss for America’s judicial system and for all of us, personally. One consolation we have in our grief is that because of John’s fervent love for the Lord, he is right now rejoicing in the loving presence of his Creator. We will keep the judge’s family and his countless friends and students in our prayers.”

WTRF 7 (includes video): “I was shocked,” said Matt Bowman. “I was hoping the news was wrong. I was thinking about his family and his courtroom family, as well, and how much grief they must be going through right now. Judge Roll was really an ideal employer. He was a mentor, he was kind and caring and funny.” Currently, Matt serves as legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, engaging in full-time pro-life, pro-family and religious freedom litigation.

CBN: Alan Sears, president of the Christian legal group the Alliance Defense Fund described Roll as “a great lawyer, sound jurist, and a long-time friend.” “His untimely death is a huge loss for America’s judicial system and for all of us, personally,” Sears said in a statement Saturday.”One consolation we have in our grief is that because of John’s fervent love for the Lord, he is right now rejoicing in the loving presence of his Creator,” he added.

ADF attorney David French writing at National Review Online / Bench Memos: “While I can’t claim to have known Judge Roll as well as many other attorneys at the Alliance Defense Fund did (our headquarters is in Arizona), I did speak with him several times and knew him by reputation. He was a great American — a man of deep faith, a longtime public servant of the highest integrity, and unfailingly kind and humble.”

Washington Post: “For more than 200 years, a safety barrier has protected our nation’s courts and our democracy. No matter how controversial the case or unpopular the ruling, no state or federal judge has been impeached for an opinion issued from the bench . . . Impeachments of judges were not designed as a tool for this kind of political disagreement, and the reason is essential to our democracy. If courts can’t make tough calls, they won’t be able to uphold the Constitution and protect our rights.”

Chicago Tribune: “A key Republican legislative leader said Friday that no decision has been made on whether lawmakers will try to impeach the remaining four justices on the Iowa Supreme Court, but if they do, a top Democrat promised ‘a fight of epic proportions.’”

“Impeachment would be ‘beyond the realm of reasonableness,’ State Rep. Kevin McCarthy, D-Des Moines, told The Cedar Rapids Gazette Editorial Board on Friday.”

Ed Whelan has a five part analysis of Judge Reinhardt’s memorandum opinion explaining his decision not to recuse himself in Prop 8 case. | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

New York Times: “In reality, and based on every other source of information, Mr. Wallerstein and a generation of J.D.’s face the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Newly elected GOP Sen. Ron Johnson [from Wisconsin] said Friday he should have been consulted before the White House resubmitted the nominations of Louis Butler and Victoria Nourse for federal judgeships and is at this time opposed to their confirmation.”

Associated Press: “The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a lawyer who has been in the forefront of the challenge to President Barack Obama’s citizenship.”

LifeNews: “The Knights of Columbus, a prominent Catholic group know for its pro-life work, is today mourning the death of one of the victims of the Arizona shooting Saturday . . . Roll had been a member of the Knights of Columbus for 24 years and members of the Fourth Degree will provide an honor guard at his funeral next week.”

Associated Press: “The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a challenge against a federal law making it illegal for criminals to own bulletproof vests. The appeal had questioned Congress’ lawmaking ability under the Commerce Clause . . . Justice Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia said they would have heard the case.”

SCOTUSblog: “Two Justices of the Supreme Court, in a dissent that may reveal a new division in the Court over Congress’s power to pass legislation under the Commerce Clause, on Monday accused the Court majority of silently accepting ‘the nullification’ of the Court’s recent rulings on that power — especially, the decision in 1995 in Lopez v. U.S.” | SCOTUSblog case page for Alderman v. United States.

“As the State Legislature begins its 2011 session, the New York State Bar Association today called on lawmakers to provide greater access to the justice system for the indigent, to ensure that marriage equality is afforded to same-sex couples, and to reform government ethics.”

ADF attorney Matt Bowman writing at CatholicVote.org: “Judge Roll hired me in 2003 fresh out of the first class of Ave Maria School of Law to work in his chambers as a law clerk. I found him among the judges I applied to work for because he listed Knights of Columbus in his biography . . . For what it’s worth, I believe Judge Roll displayed literally heroic virtue in his serving of God in his profession and his consistent, daily display of care and courtesy for the value of every person he encountered. Judge Roll lived his life’s vocation in a way truly worthy of comparison to Saint Thomas More’s daily example.”

Neomi Rao, assistant professor at George Mason Law School, writing in the Wall Street Journal: “So who, precisely, is supposed to protect the Constitution? Article VI provides that all of our elected and appointed officials in both federal and state government ‘shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution’ . . . Contrary to popular belief, and the beliefs of some lawyer-congressmen, the Supreme Court does not maintain a monopoly on constitutional interpretation.”

Fox News: “Washington D.C. lawyer [Matt Bowman] did a two-year clerkship for Roll from 2003-2005. He applied on the hope that their common membership in the Knights of Columbus might work to his advantage. They first met during Bowman’s job interview . . . Bowman called Roll an excellent lawyer but more importantly, ‘a Christian, husband and father.’”

Wall Street Journal: “‘He would sit at a table with them, eat with them, answer endless questions. He would give all of himself,’ said [Alan Sears], a longtime friend and the president of the Alliance Defense Council, a conservative legal organization based in Arizona. ‘You can imagine how many questions law students would have for a federal judge, and he didn’t duck the hard ones.’”

LifeNews: “Federal Judge John Roll, 63, was among those killed, and he was stopping by the event on the way back from attending Mass. He had been appointed by pro-life President George Bush in 1991 at the recommendation of Sen. John McCain . . . Meanwhile, the Alliance Defense Fund, a pro-life legal group, condemned the shooting death of Judge John Roll: ‘Chief Judge Roll was a great lawyer, sound jurist, and a long-time friend,’ ADF general counsel [Alan Sears] told LifeNews.com.”

Ashby Jones and Nathan Koppel writing at WSJ Blogs / Dispatch: “Judge Roll often visited law schools to give guest lectures. His presentation might end mid-afternoon, but he would invariably stick around campus until late at night, talking with students. ‘He would sit at a table with them, eat with them, answer endless questions. He would give all of himself,’ said Alan Sears, a longtime friend and the president of the Alliance Defense [Fund], a conservative legal organization based in Arizona.”

Wall Street Journal: “John Roll, the Arizona federal judge killed Saturday by a gunman at a political event, was seen in the legal community as a conservative and even-handed jurist and to those who knew him personally, a man devoted to his family and his Roman Catholic faith . . . Judge Roll went to the Giffords event immediately after Mass, which he attended almost daily, said [Alan Sears], a friend and the president of the Alliance Defense [Fund], a conservative legal group based in Arizona.”

WORLD: “Had U.S. District Judge John M. Roll not been following his daily habit of attending Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in North Tucson, it is unlikely he would have lost his life . . . No doubt many who knew Roll hold fast to the same confidence his friend [Alan Sears] had. ‘One consolation we have in our grief is that because of John’s fervent love for the Lord, he is right now rejoicing in the loving presence of his Creator,’ said Sears, who is the president of the Alliance Defense Fund.”

Lael Daniel Weinberger, Enforcing the Bill of Rights in the United States (January 6, 2011). JURISPRUDENCE OF LIBERTY, pp. 93-113, Suri Ratnapala, Gabriël A. Moens, eds., LexisNexis, 2011 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1736343

“Before the American Civil War, very few U.S. Supreme Court cases dealt with the Bill of Rights. It was not until the 20th century that the courts began to deal extensively with the Bill of Rights, and because of the court enforcement of the rights embodied in that document, the Bill of Rights has come to be the best-known part of the United States Constitution. There have been thousands of cases interpreting and applying the Bill of Rights in the 20th century, and there will undoubtedly be thousands more as our era continues to be permeated with ‘rights talk.’

This raises two important questions. First, why did Bill of Rights litigation wait a century to really begin to play an important part in American culture? Second, does the upsurge in judicial enforcement of the Bill of Rights indicate a corresponding increase in liberty? This essay examines both of these questions by examining the interplay between personal rights and structural constraints on the federal government throughout American constitutional history.”

Detroit Free Enterprise: “When Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan leaves the bench Jan. 14, Gov. Rick Snyder will have many possible choices to fill her spot. Conventional wisdom suggests he will look for a jurist with Republican roots who can plausibly win a nomination at a GOP convention in 2012 and the general election.”

The Oklahoman: “The state Supreme Court tossed aside a request to block Gov. Brad Henry from filling a vacancy on the high court before he leaves office Monday. Supreme Court justices voted 6-1 to reject a stay sought by state Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, to prevent the Democratic governor from making a record sixth appointment to the high court. Chief Justice Steven Taylor cast the dissenting vote.”

San Francisco Chronicle (AP): “Gov. Jerry Brown will have an early opportunity to shape California’s high court following the surprise announcement that its only Latino justice is stepping down next month. Justice Carlos Moreno, the only Democratic appointee on the state Supreme Court, submitted his resignation to California’s new governor on Wednesday and said his last day will be Feb. 28, according to court spokeswoman Lynn Holton.”

Des Moines Register: “A conservative group that wants to change the way Iowa Supreme Court justices are selected argued Thursday that seven lawyer members on the panel that picks finalists should be directly elected by voters.”

Seattle Times: “Charlie Wiggins has been known to spend his free time searching the Bible for references to ‘justice’ and re-enacting the state Constitutional Convention in costume . . . The bow-tied, 63-year-old appeals lawyer from Bainbridge Island is being sworn in Friday at the Temple of Justice in Olympia. He beat three-term Justice Richard Sanders by 13,000 votes out of nearly 2 million cast.”

Los Angeles Times editorial: “[I]t seems priggish to object to the idea of a justice sharing his views with members of Congress rather than law students or members of a bar association. Yet Scalia is being criticized for accepting an invitation from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) to speak on Jan. 24 to any member of Congress who wants to show up. We find it hard to share the outrage.”

At Powerline, John Hinderaker comments on a NYT editorial on the Republican takeover of the House: “Presumptuous to read the Constitution out loud? Seriously? And, in fact, the founders didn’t leave the Constitution ‘open to generations of reinterpretation;’ they provided for the document to be changed by amendment . . . citation of Constitutional authority is ‘fundamentalism?’ And why is it ‘vacuous’ for legislators to consider whether proposed legislation does, in fact, have a basis in the Constitution? Isn’t this one of their most basic duties? . . . Maybe instead of jeering at the Constitution, the Times editors should read it.”

Michael Young, In Defense of Minimal, Naive Natural Law (December 26, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1731330

“This paper articulates a defense of a minimal natural law view in two ways. First, it argues that a minimal natural law view – a view which affirms that the law itself is intrinsically valuable, reason-giving, and normative – is compatible with a weak view of legal obligation, and with a sharp distinction between law and morality. Second, this paper argues (albeit indirectly, in a methodological way) for the naive view that the law’s seeming normativity is best explained by the law’s being really normative, in itself and in abstraction from any further circumstance or social facts. The naive view, I argue, is or seems to be our own pre-theoretical view of the law. Yet, the positivist project, as traditionally understood, is committed to denying this intuitive naive view; on the positivist view, the law may really give reasons in some circumstances, but it does not give reasons necessarily, that is, it is not intrinsically reason-giving. This paper argues that the positivist project consequently has a skeptical burden to bear: it must show that all those (including most readers, and including, I suspect, even most positivists) who have some minimal, natural law intuitions are probably confused or mistaken. The positivist has this burden because it is a grounding assumption of the positivist project that the thing to be theorized by a legal philosopher is not any normative thing; unless this assumption is justified, the entire positivist project stands unsupported, and must be dispreferred to the naive view. Addressing the reasons which might be offered for the skeptical conclusion, including the theories and arguments of Joseph Raz and Andrei Marmor, this paper concludes that the positivist burden remains.”

Richard H. Pildes, Is the Supreme Court a ‘Majoritarian’ Institution? (December 31, 2010). Supreme Court Review, Vol. 2010, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1733169

“Using as a starting point the Court’s dramatically countermajoritarian recent decision in the Citizens United case, this article identifies at least six problems with the majoritarian thesis: (1) lack of clarity about who the relevant majority is that purportedly constrains the Court, such as national lawmaking majorities, national popular opinion majorities, or other possible definitions of ‘the majority’; (2) lack of convincing accounts of the mechanisms by which one or another of these majorities manages to constrain the Court; (3) disagreement about whether the Court’s most momentous decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education, were in fact majoritarian or not; (4) confusion between whether individual Court decisions reflect majoritarian preferences and whether the Court over long periods of time eventually reflects majoritarian beliefs; (5) failure to take into adequate account the changing power of the Court over time; (6) issues about whether data support the majoritarian thesis.

In addition, this article argues that good reasons exist to believe that the history of judicial review will not necessarily predict its future. However independent the Court might or might not have been in the past of political and popular constraints, the Court is likely to have more autonomy going forward than in the past. The strongest mechanism through which the Court reflects the outcomes of electoral processes, the appointments process, has been attenuated by the much longer average time Justices now serve; seats now become vacant on average every 3.1 years, rather than the 1.6 years that had long been the norm. That makes even more random any linkage between judicial appointments and national electoral outcomes.

The article concludes by offering Citizens United as a powerful reminder that, despite the best efforts of modern majoritarian theorists, Bickel’s countermajoritarian difficulty endures. Citizens United may prove to be an isolated but important episode – or a harbinger of an assertive new era of judicial review that operates with a good deal of independence from national lawmaking and popular majorities.”

Sam Stein writing at The Huffington Post: “Faced with the prospect of increasingly lengthy court vacancies, the White House on Wednesday formally renominated more than 40 judicial candidates whose possible appointments were left in limbo during the last congressional session.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Highly contested races are on tap for the spring election, including what already is shaping up to be a potentially heated battle for state Supreme Court justice.”

The Blog of Legal Times: “Senators spent little time during the past two years focusing on lower-court nominees for the federal judiciary. But as they convened today for the start of the 112th Congress, Senate Democrats have the issue on their minds.”

Iowa Independent: “Bob Vander Plaats, a three-time GOP gubernatorial candidate who now leads the latest reincarnation of the Iowa Family Policy Center’s political action arm — The Family Leader – said that ‘as a basketball coach, he was always interested in momentum’ and ‘knew it was important’ to ‘capture on that momentum and seize on that momentum, if you hoped to win the basketball game.’”

“Iowa Judicial Watch will try to alter the current merit-based selection system used to pick state Supreme Court justices during the legislative session that begins Jan. 10, Executive Director Nathan Tucker said Tuesday.”