Justice Department Seeks to Limit District Court Authority to Transfer Detainees: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston posts that the Justice Department has filed two appeals seeking resolution of whether District Court Judges have the authority to issue orders that regulate the potential transfer of detainees out of Guantanamo Bay. The first appeal was filed on July 25, 2008 and asked the D.C. Circuit Court to rule on Senior District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan's authority to require the government to give thirty days notice to a detainee's lawyer before the detainee is transferred from Guantanamo. The second appeal, filed today, questions District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer's authority to temporarily bar transfer of a detainee to his home country because he fears torture there. Both appeals argue Congress removed this power from district judges in 2006, and Boumediene v. Bush did not disturb this limit on district court judge authority. The appeals also argued that even without the law, district courts do not have the authority to interfere with Executive control of detainee affairs - aside from examining the basis of detention.

And Can Federal Judges Police Themselves?: Ironically, the Justice Department's second appeal was filed the same day Dan Slater, at Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, asked whether "the System" can "Deal with Incorrigible Judges?" The post discusses Nathan Koppel's article on U.S. District Judge Manuel Real. Judge Real is a federal judge in Los Angeles who was ordered removed from a patent-infringement case against Microsoft because he improperly ignored evidence and failed to state reasons for his decision. Both Slater's post, and Koppel's article, criticize life tenure for judges like Real. Slater writes that "any public shaming appears to have left Judge Real undeterred." Slater also quotes Charles Geyh, a judicial ethics professor at Indiana University, as stating the federal system is not well equipped to deal with incorrigible judges when their behavior does not rise to the level of impeachment.

California Begins to Desegregate Prisons: Bert Deixler, guest blogging at Sentencing Law and Policy, reports that the State of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has finally taken tentative steps toward integrating its prisons. The Supreme Court ruled California's practice to be unconstitutional in Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499 (2005). Deixler represented the plaintiff. According to Deixler, "Sierra Conservation Center and Mule Creek State Prison are the first California institutions to integrate, and there are plans for integration to spread statewise by January. It is anticipated that all 30 of California’s prisons will make the transition by 2010." He further states, "California will surely benefit when its prisons are de-segregated.... In short, all sound penalogic policies will be advanced by getting California out of the practice of racially segregating its prisoners." Commenter "Large County Prosecutor" opines that this is "One of the most truly naive statements ever to appear on this site."