Justices on Trial
Can Senate confirmation ever be less tortuous?
Posted: Thursday, June 14, 2007
Benjamin Wittes's Confirmation Wars provides an insightful and evenhanded exploration of the Senate's role in judicial confirmations.  But the confirmation wars that Wittes decries are only a symptom of a deeper illness:  the judicial usurpation of American citizens' power of self-governance on a broad range of issues that the Constitution, fairly construed, leaves to the political processes.  [Full Story]

Overturning Roe

Posted: Monday, June 11, 2007
After a brief education about what Roe v. Wade really means, public support for overturning Roe and restoring abortion policy to the democratic processes dramatically increases.  That's what a recent poll jointly commissioned by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Judicial Confirmation Network shows.    [Full Story]

Back to the States
The road ahead on partial-birth abortion.
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Now that the Supreme Court has permitted the federal ban on partial-birth abortion to go into effect, new state bans that are modeled carefully on the federal law are desirable for several reasons.  [Full Story]

Supreme Bias

Posted: Thursday, May 17, 2007
In their new biography of Justice Clarence Thomas, the Washington Post's Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher purport to offer an evenhanded, indeed empathetic portrayal of the man they say "has turned himself into the most successful victim in America." But as this jab illustrates, they repeatedly and pervasively slant their account against Thomas on matters both small and large.    [Full Story]

The Face-Off Over Partial-Birth Abortion
Judicial restraint and "facial" challenges.
Posted: Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Supreme Court 's recent ruling upholding the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 reveals the enormous gap between the majority's sound exercise of judicial restraint and the dissent's aggressive judicial activism.  This gap is reflected in the very different approaches to assessing so-called "facial" challenges to abortion regulations.  [Full Story]

A Welcome Decision
Ruling bars barbaric practice, sets stage for more abortion curbs.
Posted: Thursday, April 19, 2007
All Americans should welcome the Supreme Court ruling upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortion. The five justices in the majority who upheld the law exercised judicial restraint and properly deferred to the democratic process.   [Full Story]

Not Credible "Whatsoever"
The ABA sinks deeper
Posted: Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Among the many challenges that new White House counsel Fred Fielding will face on judicial nominations is ensuring that the American Bar Association's ideologically stacked judicial-evaluations committee behaves responsibly. Now that Mississippi attorney Michael B. Wallace has requested that President Bush not renominate him to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, it is instructive to complete an accounting of the ABA's thoroughly scandalous "not qualified" rating of Wallace.  [Full Story]

Rites and Wrongs
The Ford funeral and Justice Stevens.
Posted: Thursday, January 4, 2007
Former president Gerald Ford's state funeral stands in sharp counterpoint to Ford's statement last year that he was "prepared to allow history's judgment" of his presidency to rest exclusively on his appointment of Justice John Paul Stevens. For the ceremony at National Cathedral that Ford himself so carefully planned could never have taken place as it did -- and probably could not have occurred at all -- if Stevens's radically secularist misreading of the establishment clause were governing law.  [Full Story]

A View from the Bench
The unpersuasive case for judicial activism.
Posted: Thursday, November 30, 2006
In his book The Myth of Judicial Activism, law professor Kermit Roosevelt III contends that "judicial activism is an empty epithet" and earnestly argues that judicial decisions ought instead to be assessed against his proposed benchmark of "legitimacy." But Roosevelt fails to provide what his title and subtitle promise: He neither exposes judicial activism as a "myth" nor provides a useful alternative means of "making sense of Supreme Court decisions."  [Full Story]

Don't Despair
Strong justices can still be confirmed.
Posted: Thursday, November 9, 2006
The Democrats' capture of the Senate is bad news for President Bush's judicial nominations. But don't be fooled by Democrats' bluffing. There's still plenty of room to get another excellent Supreme Court justice -- or even two or three more -- confirmed.  [Full Story]