Judicial Activism Run Amok

Posted: Friday, May 16, 2008
On May 15, the California supreme court, by a vote of 4 to 3, invented a right to same-sex marriage under the state constitution.  That same day, EPPC President Ed Whelan offered his critical comments on the court’s ruling in a series of posts on National Review Online’s Bench Memos blog.  [Full Story]

The Mystery of the Missing Lawsuits
One year after the Supreme Court's partial-birth-abortion ruling.
Posted: Friday, April 18, 2008
One year after the Supreme Court's ruling on the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, the pro-abortion industry has not filed a single lawsuit challenging the Act's application to circumstances that supposedly threaten a mother's health.  Why not?  The question is worth pondering.  [Full Story]

How Judge Posner Thinks Judges Should Think
An unpersuasive case for pragmatism.
Posted: Thursday, April 17, 2008
In his new book, How Judges Think, Seventh Circuit judge Richard A. Posner states that he aims to offer a "cogent, unified, realistic, and appropriately eclectic account of how judges actually arrive at their decisions in nonroutine cases." But his book, in the end, offers much less insight about how judges actually think than about how Judge Posner thinks judges should think, and its case for Posnerian pragmatism is unpersuasive.  [Full Story]

Obama's Constitution
The rhetoric and the reality.
Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2008
An examination of Barack Obama's record and rhetoric on judicial nominations discloses that beneath the congeniality and charisma lies a leftist partisan who will readily resort to sly deceptions to advance his agenda of liberal judicial activism. Given the likelihood of so many changes in the membership of the Supreme Court over the next eight years, it is particularly important that voters this November recognize the real Obama.   [Full Story]

On McCain and Supreme Court Appointments

Posted: Thursday, January 31, 2008
In his contribution to NRO's post-Florida symposium on what John McCain needs to do to rally conservatives if he is the Republican nominee, EPPC President Ed Whelan addresses the matter of Supreme Court appointments.  [Full Story]

Far From Sober
Slate's defense of Linda Greenhouse.
Posted: Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Slate's Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick offer a hilariously defective defense of Linda Greenhouse's conflict of interest.  Most remarkably, they call on the New York Times to stop providing (horrors!) "sober explications" of complaints about her reporting.  [Full Story]

Ed Whelan's Response to New York Times's Public Editor

Posted: Tuesday, January 22, 2008
When EPPC President Ed Whelan informed the New York Times's public editor (or "readers' representative"), Clark Hoyt, of reporter Linda Greenhouse's conflict of interest, Hoyt went out of his way to level a cheap attack on Whelan in his Sunday column -- even as he validated the heart of Whelan's complaint.  It's quite a revealing performance by Hoyt. Here, in four parts, is Whelan's response.  [Full Story]

Judicial Activism Awards Fixed!

Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2007
A cottage industry of liberal academics and commentators has arisen to try to defuse the charge of liberal judicial activism. But the arguments cobbled together by this cottage industry are shoddy.  [Full Story]

Going South on Southwick?
The disgraceful performance of Senate Democrats.
Posted: Thursday, July 12, 2007
A big fight is brewing in the United States Senate over President Bush's nomination of former Mississippi judge Leslie H. Southwick. Senate Republicans have the ammunition they need to win this fight, either by getting Southwick confirmed or by exposing Senate Democrats as the puppets of the Left.  [Full Story]

The Next Supreme Court Vacancy
There’s plenty of room to confirm another strong justice.
Posted: Thursday, June 21, 2007
If a Supreme Court vacancy unexpectedly develops this summer, the conventional wisdom is that President Bush will find it extremely difficult or impossible to get a strong proponent of judicial restraint confirmed by the Senate. This conventional wisdom is unsound.  [Full Story]