Tag Archives: Court: U.S. Supreme

Associated Press: “Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan says she considers recent high court decisions expanding gun rights to be ‘settled law.’”

All Headline News: “‘This decision doesn’t settle the core constitutional issue of whether nondiscrimination policies in general can force religious student groups to allow non-believers to lead their groups,’ Alliance Defense Fund lawyer [Gregory Baylor], one of several attorneys who represented CLS, said in a statement.” | ADF News Release

AlterNet: “[Gregory Baylor], senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, said the ruling ‘doesn’t settle the core constitutional issue of whether nondiscrimination policies in general can force religious student groups to allow non-believers to lead their groups. The conflict still exists.’ In the long run, Baylor said, the decision ‘puts other student groups across the country at risk.’” | ADF News Release

OneNewsNow: “[ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence] says the court’s ruling has not closed the door on the issue. ‘It’s not over with and there’s a lot more litigation,” he remarks. ‘This isn’t even a loss…in the sense that we’ve lost this issue. It’s that the Supreme Court has basically kicked it down the road for another day.’” | ADF Media Clips

WorldNetDaily: “[A] dissent from Justice Samuel Alito said it was the court’s endorsement – no more or less – of viewpoint discrimination against a Christian group that required its leaders to be, well, Christian. … ‘The conflict still exists. This decision doesn’t settle the core constitutional issue of whether nondiscrimination policies in general can force religious student groups to allow non-believers to lead their groups,’ explained senior legal counsel [Gregory S. Baylor] of the Alliance Defense Fund.” | ADF News Release

California Catholic Daily: “‘The conflict still exists,’ said Alliance Defense Fund senior legal counsel [Gregory S. Baylor]. ‘This decision doesn’t settle the core constitutional issue of whether nondiscrimination policies in general can force religious student groups to allow non-believers to lead their groups. Long-term, the decision puts other student groups across the country at risk, and we will continue to fight for their constitutional rights. The Hastings policy actually requires CLS to allow atheists to lead its Bible studies and the College Democrats to accept the election of Republican officers in order for the groups to be recognized on campus. We agree with Justice Alito in his dissent that the court should have rejected this as absurd.’” | ADF News Release | ADF News Release

Inside Higher Ed: “Michael W. McConnell, lead counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which led the legal defense for the CLS, said that he was ‘very disappointed’ by the Supreme Court’s decision and predicted that it would cause great harm to Christian student groups.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Alliance Defense Fund, which helped represent the Christian Legal Society members seeking recognition on campus, similarly predicted that Monday’s decision would have limited impact because few other institutions have exactly the same policy. In a written statement, [Gregory S. Baylor], the group’s senior legal counsel, said the Hastings policy requires the Christian Legal Society to allow atheists to lead Bible studies or the College Democrats to allow the election of Republican officers. ‘We agree with Justice Alito in his dissent that the court should have rejected this as absurd,’ Mr. Baylor said.” | ADF News Release

CitizenLink: “[David French], senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, called the ruling ‘narrow and troubling.’ … ‘What makes this decision narrow,’ French said, ‘is that the “all-comers” policy is unique to Hastings.’ … ‘The university essentially (rode) roughshod over the free association rights of these students, holding that it was reasonable to require CLS to permit anyone, regardless of its views.’” | ADF News Release

beliefnetnews (Religion News Service): “‘Long-term, the decision puts other student groups across the country at risk, and we will continue to fight for their constitutional rights,’ [Greg Baylor] said in a statement. ‘The Hastings policy actually requires CLS to allow atheists to lead its Bible studies and the College Democrats to accept the election of Republican officers in order for the groups to be recognized on campus. We agree with Justice Alito in his dissent that the court should have rejected this as absurd.’” | ADF News Release

The Heritage Foundation | The Foundry: “As attested by both the Christian Legal Society and the Alliance Defense Fund, which assisted in the suit, the ruling is narrow because of several unusual facts in the case. For one, while the case was underway, the Hastings College of the Law advanced the position that its policy was to require all student groups to admit any and every interested law student as a member. The law school insisted that this policy was applied not only to CLS but to the Republican and Democratic clubs, the pro-life and pro-choice law groups, the feminist law association, La Raza, and so on. The CLS disputes this contention.” | ADF News Release

Associated Baptist Press: “‘We will keep litigating these issues,’ said [Jordan Lawrence] of the Alliance Defense Fund. ‘Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not resolve very much with this issue; there’s a lot of litigation left to do over the rights of private organizations to make sure that their leadership agrees with the common message that organizations advocate.’” | ADF News Release

Christianity Today: “‘By emphasizing the value of dissent within groups, the Court ignores the fundamental reality of an all-comers policy: Distinct student organizations exist at the whim of the majority,’ [ADF Attorney David French] wrote. ‘If “all comers” can join, then the majority can override the speech of any student group. Thus the true marketplace of ideas exists by the permission (or, more likely, apathy) of the majority. The potential for minority or disfavored groups at schools with an all-comers policy to self-censor to avoid controversy — and potential hostile takeovers — is high.’” | ADF News Release

CBN News has video of “reaction on the Supreme Court ruling and what it could mean for other religious clubs and organizations on college campuses with [Casey Mattox], legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.”

WORLDmag: “Because there are very few other public universities that have the same policy as Hastings, the Alliance Defense Fund, the group that represented the CLS, expects the ruling to have little immediate effect on other student groups. But they are concerned about the long-term effects of this ruling. ‘”The Hastings policy actually requires CLS to allow atheists to lead its Bible studies and the College Democrats to accept the election of Republican officers in order for the groups to be recognized on campus,” explained ADF Senior Legal Counsel [Gregory S. Baylor], in a statement.’”

Sarah Posner writing at Religion Dispatches: “The religious right is concerned, no doubt; the ADF is already citing Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent, warning that the decision ‘arms public educational institutions with a handy weapon for suppressing the speech of unpopular groups.’ That interpretation of what ADF president [Alan Sears] once described as the ‘collision course’ between the ‘homosexual agenda’ and religious freedom is the heart of the religious right’s opposition to LGBT equality, so it’s hard to imagine that a backlash to the decision isn’t on the horizon.” | ADF News Release

KansasCity.com (LA Times): “‘The court did not adjudicate whether the application of nondiscrimination policies to a religious student group is constitutional,’ said [Greg Baylor], senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. Baylor said two cases, involving religious groups from the University of Montana and San Diego State University, had been on hold pending the Hastings decision and may now go forward as the nondiscrimination policy questions remain unresolved.” | Los Angeles Times | ADF News Release

Education Week | School Law: “‘[L]ong-term, the decision puts other student groups across the country at risk, and we will continue to fight for their constitutional rights,’ [Gregory S. Baylor], the ADF’s senior legal counsel, said in a statement. ‘The Hastings policy actually requires CLS to allow atheists to lead its Bible studies and the College Democrats to accept the election of Republican officers in order for the groups to be recognized on campus. We agree with Justice Alito in his dissent that the court should have rejected this as absurd.’”

Religion Clause Blog: “Many advocacy groups and interested parties have issued statements on yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Here is a sampling . . . ” (links to press releases by numerous groups including ADF)

AP: “‘We were trying to make sure that military recruiters had full and complete access to our students,’ Kagan told Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, ‘and we were also trying to protect our anti-discriminatory policy. So we were trying to do both of those things.’”

SCOTUS Blog provides coverage here.

AP: “Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan told her confirmation hearings on Tuesday the Pentagon’s recruiters had access to Harvard Law School students ‘every single day I was dean,’ adding that she believes military service is the most important way anyone can serve the country.

T. Dalrymple writing at Cross and Culture: “In my earlier post I framed the issues behind CLS v. Martinez and noted the first-blush response of David French, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which argued the case alongside the Christian Legal Society. The ADF just issued their press release on the case. Granted, they have an interest in arguing that this does not decide the issue of free religious association on college campuses without discrimination. Still, they may well be right in their interpretation of the case.”

The Blog of LegalTimes: “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was the only Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to support the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor a year ago. Today, he continued to drop hints that he might be willing to vote for Elena Kagan, too.”

Breitbart: “To those hearty souls who tuned in to C-SPAN on Monday it must have sounded like a tale of two Kagans. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the panel, previewed the GOP lines of attack—reaching all the way back to her college thesis on socialism, which he said ‘seems to bemoan socialism’s demise.’ … For every GOP thrust, there was a Democratic parry. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont called her legal credentials ‘unassailable.’”

Washington Post | 44: “The Senate Judiciary Committee has announced the witness list for Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which are scheduled to begin Monday at 12:30 p.m.”

Associated Press: “Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan pledged Monday to be properly deferential to Congress if confirmed as a justice, while striving ‘to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle and in accordance with law.’”

LifeNews: “Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is drawing strong condemnation from Republicans on the Judiciary Committee in their opening statements on the first day of her nomination hearings. Even Democrats are pointing out she has little record on which to examine her judicial philosophy. … Sessions also pounded Kagan on abortion, saying ‘Kagan was also the point person for the Clinton Administration’s efforts to block Congressional restrictions on partial-birth abortions.’” | Committee on the Judiciary

Law.com: “Prominent tax lawyer and professor Martin Ginsburg, husband of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for 56 years, died Sunday at their home in Washington, D.C. Martin Ginsburg, who was 78, died from complications of metastatic cancer, according to an announcement from the Court’s public information office. Ginsburg was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and was of counsel to the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.”

The Volokh Conspiracy: “The letter is here. Among other things, McConnell argues in some detail that conservatives will likely be pretty happy about Elena Kagan on the freedom of religious and political speech, on free exercise of religion, and on the participation of religious institutions in generally available funding programs.”

Jonathan Adler writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “In today’s NYT, Adam Liptak reports on a new study by political scientists Lori Ringhand and Paul Collins Jr. analyzing the questions asked at Supreme Court confirmation hearings over the past 70 years [which] … ‘shows that the hearings often address real substance, illuminate the spirit of their times and change with shifts in partisan alignments and the demographic characteristics of nominees.’ … This is quite a different view than Elena Kagan espoused in 1995 . . . ”

The Volokh Conspiracy: “The Supreme Court holds in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment is fully applicable to the states through the 14th Amendment. … In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Court affirms the Ninth Circuit 5–4. Justice Ginsburg writes the majority, siding with the University of California on narrow grounds. Justices Stevens and Kennedy write concurrences. The four conservatives dissent in an opinion by Justice Alito.”

“Some persons argue that our nation has a ‘living’ Constitution; the court has spoken of ‘the evolving standards of decency . . .Scalia . . . [a] society that adopts a bill of rights is skeptical that ‘evolving standards of decency’ always ‘mark progress,’ and that societies always ‘mature,’ as opposed to rot.” Is he wrong?”

USA Today: “Retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will ascend the court’s mahogany bench today for the last time, as the justices hand down the final cases of their annual term. … Also today, through a fluke of Senate timing, President Obama’s nominee to succeed Stevens, Elena Kagan, will begin her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

Noah Feldman writing in the Wall Street Journal: “But satisfaction with our national progress should not make us forget its authors: the very Protestant elite that founded and long dominated our nation’s institutions of higher education and government, including the Supreme Court. Unlike almost every other dominant ethnic, racial or religious group in world history, white Protestants have ceded their socioeconomic power by hewing voluntarily to the values of merit and inclusion, values now shared broadly by Americans of different backgrounds. The decline of the Protestant elite is actually its greatest triumph.”

Catholic News Service: “The U.S. Supreme Court has left standing a lower court ruling that will allow an Oregon man to try to hold the Vatican financially responsible for his sexual abuse by a priest, if he can persuade the court that the priest was an employee of the Vatican. By declining to take Holy See v. John Doe, the court June 28 left intact the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said because of the way Oregon law defines employment, the Vatican is not protected under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act from potential liability for the actions of a priest who Doe, the unidentified plaintiff, said sexually abused him in the 1960s.” | Related: Charles J. Chaput: Suing the Church

Religion Clause: “Justice Alito wrote a dissent, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas. The dissent argued that the Court should focus on the non-discrimination policy as written, since that was the policy originally invoked to deny CLS registration. That policy, the dissent argues, amounts to viewpoint discrimination since only religious groups are required to admit students who do not share their views. Political groups or groups formed around other causes can limit membership. The dissent goes on to argue that even limiting the analysis to the broader all-comers rule, the policy is unconstitutional. It was adopted as a pretext to suppress a particular viewpoint and it is not reasonable in light of the purposes of the student organization policy which is promoting diversity among student organizations.” | ADF News Release

Wes Vernon writing at Renew America: “Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is right out of central casting as a stereotypical example of America’s ‘ruling class’ — i.e., out of step with the great majority of Americans, but with a sense of entitlement to wield power in such a way as to make policy against our wishes because we are her inferiors.”

FindLaw (AP): “Elena Kagan, a trailblazer for women and the law, is hitting a new path that could be strewn with a few rough patches: the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings. Kagan’s chances are bright as she heads into a marathon week of high-pressure vetting before the Judiciary panel, pressing to portray herself as a mainstream, impartial addition to the court. She’s set to break weeks of public silence in sworn testimony before the panel reviewing her nomination.”

Associated Press: “What’s new is the experience level of committee members. Three have chaired confirmation hearings before. There are no rookies; even the junior senators toward the end of the dais participated in the questioning last year of Obama’s first nominee for the high court, Sonia Sotomayor. … Republicans are examining her experience from other angles. She’s never been a judge. As an adviser to President Bill Clinton, she showed a political shrewdness that GOP lawmakers say isn’t appropriate for an impartial justice. Most of all, they’ve taken aim at Kagan’s brief refusal to give military recruiters access to the law school’s career services office, over the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy against openly gay soldiers.”

WorldNetDaily: “Arguing death threats have a significant ‘chilling’ effect on free speech, an attorney representing supporters of Washington state’s traditional-marriage referendum says he’s confident a lower court will decide to protect their names and addresses. … The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week it would not issue a blanket ban on the release of signatures on petition documents. The high court, however, explained its decision did not prevent the Washington state petition signers from gaining an exemption from public disclosure at the lower court. … [CWA] was one of many [organizations] that filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the Washington state case. Other groups included Liberty Counsel, Cato Institute, Institute for Justice, Alliance Defense Fund, American Center for Law and Justice and the Justice and Freedom Fund.”

Coverage is available here.

The link to the live blog is here.

ABA Journal: “In fact, Kennedy’s role the last few years has surpassed merely being the median judge. He has become a ‘super median’—the decisive central judge that neither side can do without, according to Northwestern law professors Lee Epstein and Tonja Jacobi. … the policy gap between Kennedy and the justices on either side of him is wide enough to keep him starkly in the middle, Epstein and Jacobi’s research shows. Nor is there any overlap on policy issues for other justices to share Kennedy’s moderate range.”

“Bottom line: a disappointing decision but one that does not come close to settling core constitutional issues on campus. In fact, it doesn’t even decide this case since it’s remanded for further proceedings.”

AP: “The Supreme Court on Monday struck down part of the anti-fraud law enacted in response to Enron and other corporate scandals from the early 2000s, but said its decision has limited consequences. The justices voted 5-4 that the Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted in 2002 violates the Constitution’s separation of powers mandate.”

Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Accounting Oversight Board, No. 08-861 (U.S. June 28, 2010)

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell:  ”The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its hearing today on the nomination of Elena Kagan to be the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Kagan is no stranger to the confirmation process; in fact, she devoted one of her few academic writings entirely to the subject . . . ”

ChristianNewsWire: “Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, had the following comments: … ‘In June 2004, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower federal court decision which had upheld a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act, a law that would have required websites that commercially distribute pornography to take reasonable steps to keep kids away from the smut. In so doing, the Supreme Court agreed with the trial court’s finding that “blocking or filtering technology may be at least as successful as COPA would be in restricting minors’ access to harmful material online without imposing the burden on constitutionally protected speech that COPA imposes on adult users…” Specifically, the trial court found (in the words of the appellate court) that requiring adults to ‘identify themselves as a precondition to accessing disfavored speech’ would ‘likely…deter many adults from accessing that speech.”‘”

The Court’s ruling in McDonald v. Chicago is here.

Kevin K. Washburn, Elena Kagan and the Miracle at Harvard (June 28, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1631496

“During Elena Kagan’s tenure as dean, a miracle occurred. Harvard Law School was transformed. Today, students embrace the institution. The professors engage with one another. And the school’s widely discussed dysfunctions are distant memories. Kagan accomplished this miracle by modeling two important and traditional American values: hard work and community. Kagan was known for walking the halls tirelessly to learn the views of her bright and independent colleagues and to seek consensus. She broke the gridlock between faculty political factions that had atrophied the academic life of the institution. Even more importantly. she transformed the student experience. This essay seeks to describe Kagan’s transformational leadership and provide insight as to the specific changes Kagan made to accomplish the miracle.”

Lori A. Ringhand and Paul M. Collins, May it Please the Senate: An Empirical Analysis of the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings of Supreme Court Nominees, 1939-2009 (June 25, 2010). UGA Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-12. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1630403

“This paper examines the questions asked and answers given by every Supreme Court nominee who has appeared to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee since 1939. In doing so, it uses a new dataset developed by the authors. This database, which provides a much-needed empirical foundation for scholarship in emerging areas of constitutional law and political science, captures all of the statements made at the hearings and codes these comments by issue area, subissue area, party of the appointing president, and party of the questioning senator. The dataset allows us to quantify for the fist time such things as which issues are most frequently discussed at the hearings, whether those issues have changed over time, and whether they vary depending on the party of the appointing president and the party of the questioning senator. We also investigate if questioning patterns differ depending on the race or gender of the nominee. Some of our results are unsurprising: for example, the hearings have become longer. Others, however, challenge conventional wisdom: the Bork hearing is less of an outlier in several ways than is frequently assumed, and abortion has not dominated the hearings. We also discover that there is issue area variation over time, and that there are notable disparities in the issues addressed by Democratic versus Republican senators. Finally, we find that female and minority nominees face a significantly different hearing environment than do white male nominees.”

Baptist Press: “With Elena Kagan’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing set to begin Monday, conservative groups are pushing back against the media storyline that says President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee is a blank slate on hot-button social issues.”

“That means that the only two justices who have not written an opinion from the April sitting are Justice Ginsburg and retiring Justice Stevens . . . ”

The Blog of LegalTimes: “Republican-called witnesses will include several current or retired members of the military, such as U.S. Army retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a fundamentalist Christian, and Army National Guard Capt. Pete Hegseth, who is executive director of the conservative Vets for Freedom.”

Christian Science Monitor: “When an appeals court issues an opinion, that doesn’t mean the opinion takes immediate effect. The government appealed the Third Circuit’s decision to the US Supreme Court. To facilitate the appeal, the Third Circuit stayed its ruling, and postponed its suggestion than an injunction be issued against enforcement of the Solomon Amendment. Nonetheless, the day after the Third Circuit opinion, Kagan announced that the law school would return to its prior policy sharply limiting the access of military recruiters . . .  In her statement, Kagan said that the Third Circuit ruling had ‘enjoined the enforcement of the Solomon Amendment.’ That statement is true but misleading given that the case would almost certainly be appealed. If appealed, the force of the decision would likely be stayed pending the outcome of the appeal.”

Jeremy Rabkin writing at the Heritage Foundation: “What are Elena Kagan’s views on foreign policy? What does she think about America’s role in the world? At one time, such questions would have seemed irrelevant, if not impudent, for a Supreme Court nominee. Not anymore. Recent Supreme Court decisions, and commonly expressed views among commentators, seem to embrace a new role for international institutions, foreign practices, and foreign opinion in shaping American law. Although very little is known about Kagan’s judicial philosophy, or her opinions on great constitutional issues, her record, such as it is, cries out for questioning on these matters. It remains unlikely that Kagan will jeopardize her confirmation by giving forthright answers to such questions. But Senators should not pass up the opportunity to put her on the spot by pressing for clear and direct responses to fundamental questions about her judicial philosophy. Here are particularly compelling reasons to raise these questions with Elena Kagan.”

Insider Online: “Liberals . . . are trying to talk about a ‘conservative court’ as an example of judicial activism. And, of course, we would suggest to you that, by any definition, the court is not necessarily conservative and, certainly in terms of activism, the conservative members of the court are those judges who are faithful to the Constitution–are not engaged in judicial activism.”

George F. Will writing in The Washington Post: “Given Elena Kagan’s aversion to ‘vapid and hollow’ confirmation hearings devoid of ‘legal analysis,’ beginning Monday she might relish answering these questions: … In Federalist 45, James Madison said: ‘The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.’ What did the Father of the Constitution not understand about the Constitution? Are you a Madisonian? Does the doctrine of enumerated powers impose any limits on the federal government? Can you cite some things that, because of that doctrine, the federal government has no constitutional power to do”

Religion Clause: “As hearings on the nomination of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court approach, more focus is now being given to her views on religious liberty and church-state separation.” (click for more analysis and links)

Washington Times editorial: “Solicitor General Elena Kagan is too political, too leftist, too inexperienced and too disrespectful towards existing law to be confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court. … We know she is remarkably lacking in courtroom experience. … We know she deliberately ignored the law while at Harvard, and unfairly besmirched our military in time of war. … We know she cut corners in order to preserve partial-birth abortions. … We know she is willing to undercut First Amendment free speech for political purposes. … We know Ms. Kagan is hostile to gun rights. … We know she believes foreign law is highly relevant to U.S. law. … We know she believes judges should automatically favor certain classes of people and impose their own values to reach desired outcomes.”

New York Times: “Most Americans have never heard of Aharon Barak. If they tune in to Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, they will. Judge Barak, the retired president of the Supreme Court of Israel, has advocated an expansive role for the judiciary in his home country. But in this country, he has emerged over the past few days as a kind of liberal judicial villain for Republicans and conservatives, who are trying to turn Ms. Kagan’s praise for him against her.”

Law.com: “[T]wo separate reports issued Wednesday suggest that Kagan may part company with Stevens in cases involving religious liberty. … In one report, scholar Melissa Rogers suggests Kagan could ‘move the Court closer to reinvigorating the Free Exercise Clause and thus closer to providing additional protection for the peaceful practice of all faiths.’ … The other report issued Wednesday treats Kagan’s views on the issue with alarm. Her memo on the California case ‘raises many questions,’ according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State.”

CNSNews: “Levin said most people are happy when “one of their own” is nominated to such a high position. But, he added, ‘We feel that Elena Kagan turns traditional Judaism on its head – from a concept of a nation of priests and holy people, she is turning it into, Let’s homosexualize every segment of society. And by the way, partial-birth babies have no right to be delivered.’”

ChristianNewsWire: “While any number of our co-religionists would represent the undeniable, historic Torah values shared by Orthodox and traditional Jews, we are devastated and broken-hearted by the choice of Elena Kagan. According to the Torah perspective adhered to by our 850-plus member Rabbis, as well as hundreds of thousands of Orthodox and traditional Jews, MS. KAGAN IS NON-KOSHER – NOT FIT TO SERVE – ON THE SUPREME COURT, OR ANY OTHER COURT.”

CNSNews: “Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) each refused to say whether Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should have to justify her view on abortion at her upcoming confirmation hearing.”

Associated Press: “Elena Kagan’s a politics-driven liberal, her detractors say. She’s a judicial activist. She treated military recruiters like second-class citizens during wartime. … ‘There will be a huge theme about whether the political activist part of her life and career, and her lack of legal experience, either as a judge or a lawyer – whether that will overcome the responsibility she has to be faithful to the law,’ said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel.”

Boston Globe | Political Intelligence: “The 15-member Standing Committee of the American Bar Association has rated Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan ‘well-qualified’ by a unanimous vote, with one abstention, according to the ABA. It is the association’s highest rating for judicial nominees.”

“Roe itself was not decided along party lines. … But by intervening so heavy-handedly in a matter that over which there was not yet a political consensus, the Roe court prompted a powerful backlash, the rise of the antiabortion movement, which became a key part of the Republican constituency. The pro-abortion side in turn became ever more immoderate and powerful within the Democratic Party . . . ”

ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco appeared on the Drew Mariani Show (Relevant Radio) to discuss the Arizona school choice litigation pending at the U.S. Supreme Court. | MP3 10:16 mins | ADF Media information page

Concerned Women for America: “Contrary to the ‘blank slate’ the White House media machine has tried to sell the American people, an objective review of Elena Kagan’s record reveals a surprisingly clear picture of who she is. Kagan’s record is that of a liberal political soldier, not an impartial jurist.”

Wall Street Journal: “The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll and a separate poll by C-SPAN affirm earlier readings that suggested a plurality of Americans support Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but the support isn’t deep. The Journal’s poll finds 29% of Americans support Kagan, while 23% are opposed. Nearly half, 47%, say they don’t know enough to give an opinion. The C-SPAN poll finds 38% of respondents support Kagan, while 30% don’t and 33% have no opinion. A USA Today/Gallup poll released in early June found 46% supported Kagan and 32% were opposed, as Washington Wire reported at the time.”

LifeNews: “The leading Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee says there is still a possibility that Republicans will mount a filibuster against pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. She has drawn strong opposition from a number of pro-life organizations that cite her support for abortion, human cloning, and assisted suicide. ‘I wouldn’t take it off the table,’ Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, a pro-life Alabama lawmaker, said, according to USA Today.”

The Court is also expected to issue its ruling in the 2nd Amendment case, McDonald v. Chicago on Monday.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “Americans United for Separation of Church and State today urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan about her views on crucial religious liberty issues. In a letter to Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy and ranking minority member Sen. Jeff Sessions . . . ”

Rasmussen Reports: “Forty-two percent (42%) of U.S. voters now believe Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should not be confirmed following the Senate hearings scheduled to begin next week. That’s up nine points from the week President Obama announced her nomination and the highest level of opposition to date in Rasmussen Reports tracking of the Kagan nomination.”