Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution reads: The President… shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint… Judges of the supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States…” (Pay particular attention to the usage of the words “Advice and Consent,” for that phrase is what this entire debate revolves ... Read More
With the predictable 5-4 lineup, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that, in order to exclude from evidence incriminating statements to the police, criminal suspects must have unambiguously invoked their right to remain silent. The case essentially asked, what constitutes a waiver of one’s Miranda rights? Does sitting silent, unresponsive, for nearly three hours, as did the suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, ... Read More
My Harvard Independent column for this week addresses the retirement of John Paul Stevens and the issue of picking his successor. Read the original here. If they made posters of Supreme Court Justices, I’d put John Paul Stevens on my bedroom wall. The man is a progressive hero — first and foremost, for his longevity. In 2006, the liberal radio ... Read More
How the debate over crack cocaine sentencing has moved beyond race In 1986, amid America’s crack epidemic and the associated violence in inner cities, Congress decided to punish possession of five grams of crack as harshly as it punishes possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine. Known as the 100:1 disparity, this law has inundated prisons with low-level crack dealers, ... Read More
After Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D – Pa.) switch to the Democratic Party yesterday, I decided to check out a piece he wrote for The New York Review of Books, “The Need to Roll Back Presidential Power Grabs.” In the piece Specter details his plans to reintroduce legislation designed to limit executive power that failed to pass during the Bush administration. ... Read More
With all this talk about gay marriage, we eventually have to come to the question: Who decides? Who gets to say whether we will have gay marriage or not? And that question eventually becomes, Is it okay for courts to legalize gay marriage if legislatures won’t? Publius over at Obsidian Wings has some interesting thoughts on the matter. He claims ... Read More
Crucial crossroad, or more of the same? Every election cycle, we are told that the future of the Supreme Court, and particularly the future of abortion jurisprudence, is at stake. This election-centric view infects the mainstream media, which routinely publish October headlines like “This time, Roe v. Wade really could hang in the balance,” as the Los Angeles Times declared ... Read More
Methods of appointing State Supreme Court judges That law be applied fairly and impartially is a defining ideal of the American legal system. Yet while impartiality lies at the foundation of our courts, it is surprisingly difficult to achieve. Charles Hall, director of communications for Justice at Stake, a nonpartisan campaign for “fair and impartial” courts, told the HPR that ... Read More
Obama and the conservative legal movement That a president would search for judges who are ideological allies is unsurprising, to say the least. Certainly we are used to the idea that this is how presidents behave when it comes toƒ their Supreme Court nominees. President Bush vetted his nominees to the federal courts of appeals “to find those who shared ... Read More
Harvard students had Monday off for President’s Day and I made use of my free time by checking in on the final day of this years Harvard Speech and Debate tournament. A good friend of mine from high school was in town coaching his student in the tournament, and the guy made it all the way to finals, though he ... Read More
Bush fought for unprecedented expansion of presidential power – and failed By Gabriella Anderson ’12 and Elise Liu ‘11 Executive fiat. Secret orders. Martial law. These are the trademarks of authoritarian regimes, and yet they also rank among powers presumed by the Bush administration in the past eight years. Begun in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush’s ... Read More
Congress resists a decline in executive transparencyBy Warren Loegering ‘12 Embedded in both the Constitution and history, transparent government is one of the core principles of American democracy. Yet during the last eight years, the Bush administration has consistently acted to make government more secretive; laws promoting public disclosure have contracted while laws promoting secrecy have expanded. Barton Gellman, Pulitzer ... Read More
