Posts Tagged ‘Supreme Court’
Courtesy of WikiCommons
Okay folks, it’s time for us at USDemocrazy to consult our legal affairs correspondent for some advice (and, no it has nothing to do with that mountain of parking tickets under our carpet).
It just that we’ve heard a new phrase being used by the Supreme Court in recent days. The phrase is “Honest services”. When asked about the phrase, our resident Legal eagle said he would get back to us about it… here’s what he found: …read more.
We here at USDemocrazy are constantly bamboozled by judges, courts and legal stuff like that (BTW isn’t bamboozled a cool word?).
When it comes to being bamboozled, few things can be more head-scratching than our nation’s Supreme Court! …read more.
In our crazy/busy world, we at USDemocrazy know how easy it is to miss interesting stories… (in our case it is because we are crazy/busy sleeping)
We nearly missed this story.Fortunately our eagle eyed (and awake) legal correspondent spotted this rare, rare event.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ordered a new hearing for a death row inmate, Troy Anthony Davis.
Mr. Davis was convicted in 1989 for the murder of an off-duty police officer. However, since that time, the evidence against Davis has been more than a little questionable.
Davis’ case has attracted the attentions of not only the Supreme Court, but the international community as well (including the likes of Pope Benedict XVI, former president Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu).
This is really interesting stuff, for any of you law junkies out there. Here’s a bit of a rundown on Tuesday’s decision.
So, the first question. Why would somebody think that Davis could be innocent after a fair trial. The NYTimes has us covered there:
Seven of the witnesses against Mr. Davis have recanted, and several people have implicated the prosecution’s main witness as the actual killer of the officer, Mark MacPhail.
So, obviously, there is some serious room for doubt in this case. If there is such serious doubt, and a man’s life is on the line, you’d think the Supreme Court would unanimously behind holding a new hearing…
Nope. The Washington Post has us covered on this front:
Justice Antonin Scalia objected to the court’s decision to order a new hearing, an “extraordinary step” he said the court had not taken in nearly 50 years. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, he called the action a “fool’s errand” and a “confusing exercise that can serve no purpose except to delay the state’s execution of its lawful criminal judgment.”
“How can this be?” you ask? Well, this is legal stuff, so it does come down to a point of law. The WSJ Law Blog poses the question for us:
It’s a fascinating question: does the Constitution require a stay of execution of a convicted defendant who had fair trial but later is able to show that he’s actually innocent?
Crazy stuff, isn’t it? You’re guilty, but you’re not, though you got a fair trial that ended unfairly. Whew, its got us dizzy. Time for a nap.
Thanks to Wikicommons.
The newest on the highest bench. Sotomayor confirmed by the US Senate.
NOT TWITTER!!! Twitter gets taken down by black hats.
Already hard at work. New NASA satellite checks out far away planets.
It seems to us here at USDemocrazy like months have passed since President Obama named Sonia Sotomayor as his choice for a Supreme Court Justice. (Wait… months have passed…)
Well, finally some actual voting for Sotomayor’s nomination has started… and the nominee is a sitting pretty.
She has gotten the stamp of approval from the very important folks on the Senate Judiciary Committee. These usually bodes well for the next step: a vote in front of the the entire Senate.
We here at USDemocrazy have your Rundown:
First, the gist of the matter, as provided by the NYTimes:
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted, 13 to 6, on Tuesday to endorse the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, easing her path to likely confirmation as the first Hispanic member of the tribunal.
So what does a 13-6 vote mean you ask, the BLT enlightens us:
All Democrats on the committee voted in favor of her nomination. All Republicans but one — Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) — voted against it, as expected.
So what does that mean? How does that stack up to previous nominees? The Washington Post has the answer:
The committee’s vote was more polarized than its September 2005 vote on the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., who is now the court’s chief justice, when three Democrats joined the panel’s Republicans in supporting his confirmation. Tuesday’s vote, however, was less divided than the vote on the most recent nominee, Samuel A. Alito Jr., in January 2006, when the panel endorsed him by splitting entirely along party lines.
Now for something cool. Click on THIS LINK to the Wall Street Journal Online, which has an interactive breakdown on the the individual votes of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This is just the tip of the iceberg my friends, with juicy moments of political divisiveness ahead. We here at USDemocrazy will keep our ear to the ground. In the mean time, tell us what YOU think!
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Homeless? Try working for a lobbying firm.
Hey! Lay off the little guy. PETA angered at Obama’s murder of fly.
You have the right to remain silent, but not more DNA. Supreme Court lays down the law.
Ladies and gentlemen! We welcome you to another episode of USDemocrazy’s legal drama show: Full Court Press! [All rise.]
We are aware that thousands of people have been wagering millions of dollars this weekend betting on a horse race, but there is a far more important race going on in Washington… one where the winning currency is not dollars, but POWER!
That contest is the race to see who will be the first Supreme Court justice to FINISH! (their term).
The winner of that derby is none other than Justice David H. Souter.
For those of you who don’t know who the fleet-footed justice is, consult the all-knowing Wikipedia here. The big news as of Friday, May 1st, is:
Justice Souter is bolting the stable (i.e. retiring).
What does that mean you ask? With only nine members presiding on this almightiest of almighty courts, any change in personnel is a BIG deal. Filling a vacant seat on the Supreme Court is a chance for a President to appoint a political ally who may stay in power for decades.
So what exactly is President Obama looking for in a candidate for this important post? There are a couple of theories:
Dan Balz at the Washington Post says its going to be someone youthful, and who will fill the spot Souter played on the “liberal bloc” of the Supreme Court.
The New York Times reminds us of something we often forget. Mr. Obama was a law professor! Sounds like the NYT is looking to see a nominee who is
not a larger-than-life liberal to counter the conservative pyrotechnics of Justice Antonin Scalia, but a careful pragmatist with a limited view of the role of courts.
Check out the LIST of candidates that the good folks at Huffington Post assembled here and the list that ol’ Daily Beast assembled here.
One thing to keep in mind is that the composition of the Court is very important to both politicians and the public. You hear a lot about getting minorities and women on the bench, but a couple of journalists had some lesser-pondered observations about what makes up the Court.
Paul Campos at the Daily Beast says that what’s more rare than a minority on the bench is someone without a Harvard or Yale degree! He uses some pretty strong words like:
Supreme Court nominations have become repositories of the sort of superficial status markers that have come to obsess the American upper class.
Ben Smith at Politico raises another interesting point. Should the President nominate likely candidate Sonia Sotomayor:
most American Hispanics are Catholic or of Catholic origin — to the Supreme Court would diminish the court’s diversity in one way: The court would then be fully two-thirds Catholic.
Whether that actually matters or not we have no clue. So all this conjecture is neat, but what does THE PRESIDENT say he’s looking for? He’s the one picking right? Well, sources show that Mr. Obama is looking for someone who could show “empathy for the poor and disadvantaged” and be attuned to the “daily realities of people’s lives.”
There are plenty of folks who are backing different horses in this contest. You can be sure we here at USDemocrazy will be handicapping it all for you. Who’s your odds-on favorite? And how much are you willing to wager?
So what ever happened with that gun control court case? Apparently not much.
Get off my Geithner… says President Obama.
Flaming faucet… And you thought you could only get ‘fire water’ from a bar!
Time for another exciting episode of (get ready for it ) Full Court Press! (fanfare)
The times they be a-changing! Remember when one of the most controversial parts of the Bush administration’s policies on the War on Terror (remember that war?) was the indefinite detention of enemy combatants? (Remember Guantanamo Bay?)
Well, our friends in the Supreme Court haven’t forgotten… they decided to tackle that controversial policy with gusto. They recently erased a lower court ruling that allowed indefinite military detention of legal residents of the United States (that probably means you!).
The decision revolves around the case of one Ali Saleg Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar residing legally in the US at the time of his arrest in 2001.
The Bush folks wanted to keep the terror suspect incarcerated without trial indefinitely (he was being kept in a Navy brig). Mr. al-Marri might be a nasty fellow but many Americans think that even nasty people should be put on trial. It seems the Supreme Court thought the same.
The Obama legal eagles were planning to ignore the previous Bush Doctrine on detainees anyway. They had already decided a short time ago to try Mr. al-Marri in civilian court (the NYT can tell you all about that here).
So… let us try to review: the Bush folks tried not to try, but that try was tried and tossed. Very trying times indeed…
Welcome to another exciting episode of Full Court Press! (fanfare)
Today we aren’t talking about any confusing legal precedents, judicial opinions or other juicy stuff. Today we talk about YouTube! (Well, sort of…) Actually, we’re going to tell you about how the Youtube era is streaming its way live into the Supreme Court!
In an article by the New York Times, the Supreme Court of the United States finds its first petition filed via video link (video and Youtube… get the link?). This could have some startling effects, say the people at Harvard (some of whom are a lot smarter than we are). According to the the Harvard study, Supreme Court justices may be less willing to believe things unless they can see them with their own two eyes. (Sounds smart to us!)
Now, whether this is a good or bad thing may be way over our heads! Check out for yourself the New York Times article here.
Welcome sports fans to another episode of Full Court Press!
They say never to talk about politics or religion, that you’ll just lose friends… but we here at USDemocrazy are going after both! In a recent Supreme Court ruling, Pleasant Grove City v. Summum (07-665), Justice Alito writes about the TEN COMMANDMENTS! (Commandment number 11: Thou shalt be very careful when dealing with the Ten Commandments.)
He handed down an opinion that discusses free speech, a monument in Pleasant Grove City, Utah and those commanding Commandments. Head over to the NY Times to get the general gist of the case.
“Hold on!” you might say. Doesn’t that conflict with some kind of church and state and free speech and Charleton Heston kind of thing? Well SCOTUS blog breaks down the thought process pretty nicely:
“Government policy on placement of permanent markets [they're refering to a monument here] in a public park is, constitutionally speaking, a form of government speech [The monument isn't actually speaking... he's talking about what is being written on the monument] so there is no Free Speech Clause issue when a Ten Commandments monument [oh, THAT'S what is written on the monument] is accepted but a monument to a different religion is excluded. ” (Okay that is alot to chew on there… still pretty important stuff.)
Check out all of SCOTUS blog’s discussion on the case and the tight rope act of walking the Free Speech Clause and the Establishment Clause here! But more importantly, Justice Alito references John Lennon in the court opinion! The BLT has the scoop on that here!
