Media Study Reveals a "Conservative" Supreme Court: At The Ninth Justice, Amy Harder and Charlie Szymanski report that a study by Northwestern law professor Lee Epstein has revealed that since 1937 "[t]urnover on the Supreme Court has led to increasingly conservative nominees and likely a more conservative court..." The study measures a nominee's ideology according to the Segal-Cover score, which examines newspapers' editorials written before confirmation to gauge perception of a nominee. This means that the results will not be perfect. Harder and Szymanski write: "Assumptions or bias in the media could skew the results, and justices sometimes change while serving." After all, Justices Stevens and Harry Blackmun both "scored as safely conservative nominees," but later emerged as liberals. The study does lend credibility to claims that none of the President's potential nominees would have "shift[ed] the court's conservative slant."
Tennessee's Lethal Injection Procedures: Doug Berman posts news of the Sixth Circuit's decision to uphold Tennessee's lethal injection procedures on Sentencing Law and Policy. According to Berman, a split Sixth Circuit panel has found Tennesse's procedure to be "constitutionally sound." Today's decision in Harbison v. Little, No. 07-6225 (6th Cir. July 2, 2009), relied on Baze v. Rees, which upheld Kentucky's lethal injection protocol. Since Tennessee's protocol was "substantially similar" to Kentucky's, the Sixth Circuit vacated the lower court's decision in favor of Little, and remanded for further proceedings. Judge Clay dissented, believing that the Sixth Circuit's ruling "usurp[ed] the district court's role as a factfinder and decides an issue never presented to the district court..."
Judge Kozinski Avoids Punishment: At Blog of Legal Times, Tony Mauro reports on a Third Circuit memorandum opinion that admonishes Judge Kozinski but concludes no further punishment is needed. The opinion states that Judge Kozinski was "judicially imprudent" when he maintained sexually explicit material on a personal web site and failed to prevent public access to it. This all began in 2008 when the Los Angeles Times reported that Kozinski's site contained explicit material, at a time when he was about to preside over an obscenity trial. Judge Kozinski declared a mistrial and asked th Ninth Circuit's judicial council to look into his conduct. Today's Third Circuit decision puts the issue to rest by concluding that Judge Kozinski's "acknowledgment of responsibility together with other corrective action, his apology, and our admonishment, combined with the public dissemination of this opinion.." was sufficient punishment. Jonathan Adler's post on the decision can be found at Volokh Conspiracy, and Doug Berman has this post on Sentencing Law & Policy. Ashby Jones writes "we can't say we're surprised" at Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. Our previous blog posts on the incident can be found here, and here.
Pretty Cool... Today, SCOTUSblog links to this hyperlinked version of Ricci v. DeStefano at PARADOCS. The file is large (25MB), but its size may be justified. If you download the decision, you wil be able to access relevant U.S. Codes and Supreme Court decisions (in Westlaw format) just by clicking on the link. Think of all the time this will save busy attorneys, or lowly research clerks...
Tennessee's Lethal Injection Procedures: Doug Berman posts news of the Sixth Circuit's decision to uphold Tennessee's lethal injection procedures on Sentencing Law and Policy. According to Berman, a split Sixth Circuit panel has found Tennesse's procedure to be "constitutionally sound." Today's decision in Harbison v. Little, No. 07-6225 (6th Cir. July 2, 2009), relied on Baze v. Rees, which upheld Kentucky's lethal injection protocol. Since Tennessee's protocol was "substantially similar" to Kentucky's, the Sixth Circuit vacated the lower court's decision in favor of Little, and remanded for further proceedings. Judge Clay dissented, believing that the Sixth Circuit's ruling "usurp[ed] the district court's role as a factfinder and decides an issue never presented to the district court..."
Judge Kozinski Avoids Punishment: At Blog of Legal Times, Tony Mauro reports on a Third Circuit memorandum opinion that admonishes Judge Kozinski but concludes no further punishment is needed. The opinion states that Judge Kozinski was "judicially imprudent" when he maintained sexually explicit material on a personal web site and failed to prevent public access to it. This all began in 2008 when the Los Angeles Times reported that Kozinski's site contained explicit material, at a time when he was about to preside over an obscenity trial. Judge Kozinski declared a mistrial and asked th Ninth Circuit's judicial council to look into his conduct. Today's Third Circuit decision puts the issue to rest by concluding that Judge Kozinski's "acknowledgment of responsibility together with other corrective action, his apology, and our admonishment, combined with the public dissemination of this opinion.." was sufficient punishment. Jonathan Adler's post on the decision can be found at Volokh Conspiracy, and Doug Berman has this post on Sentencing Law & Policy. Ashby Jones writes "we can't say we're surprised" at Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. Our previous blog posts on the incident can be found here, and here.
Pretty Cool... Today, SCOTUSblog links to this hyperlinked version of Ricci v. DeStefano at PARADOCS. The file is large (25MB), but its size may be justified. If you download the decision, you wil be able to access relevant U.S. Codes and Supreme Court decisions (in Westlaw format) just by clicking on the link. Think of all the time this will save busy attorneys, or lowly research clerks...
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