Posted on 07/04/2005 9:20:24 PM PDT by GOPGuide
[SNIP]
On Friday, with the announced retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor from the Supreme Court, It took a few minutes for the news to set in on Capitol Hill, among Republicans and Democrats alike. After all, even the White House in briefing Republican leadership on the Hill spoke in the belief that it would be Chief Justice William Rehnquist who is retiring.
"The White House seemed to be expecting Rehnquist first, that was what my boss was getting briefed on," says a staffer for a Senator sitting on the Judiciary Committee. "We were told Rehnquist in July, possibly later this year."
Rumors are already swirling about a possible third retirement after November. The most likely would be Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who according to former Supreme Court clerks may be in poorer health than Justice Rehnquist.
"That's the seat for [Albert] Gonzales, that third seat if it opens up," says Department of Justice staffer. "All of this depends on how the first nomination goes, but the assumption here is that this is not the time for Gonzales."
As of this writing federal Judge Emilio Garza is the frontrunner to replace O'Conner. There are several indicators, which may all be red herrings, but that is half the fun.
First, Texas Sen. John Cornyn met with the President, as well as Chief of Staff Andrew Card and several members of the White House Counsel office early Friday. Up on Capitol Hill, rumors were quickly swirling that Cornyn had been offered the Supreme Court nomination. Those rumors were fueled when his senior staff essentially went underground for several hours.
But later in the day, Cornyn was making television appearances to discuss the nominations process, as well as placing an op-ed about the process.
Cornyn is now believed to be the President's point person in the Senate to help measure the level of support for potential nominees. "He's the President's 'consultation' guy," says a Senate leadership source. "That's how we're proceeding. If he is the nominee, we will be surprised again. But that's nothing new with this White House."
Cornyn and Garza know each other from their days in Texas and other legal circles.
Another indicator of Garza's status is that several senior Republican staffers on the Judiciary Committee have begun poring over court rulings from the period of 1987 through 1990, a period when Garza served as a U.S. district judge before his elevation to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
That research, though, could just as well apply to Judge Edith Hollan Jones, who has been sitting on the Fifth Circuit since 1985. Jones was considered for possible Supreme Court nominations by President George H.W. Bush.
At least one already has.
Does this noble fealty to the "law" also cover his ruling against parental notification for abortions while on the Texas S.C.?
-Dan
That's the way I see it! If the Dims oppose a Black woman, they're toast!
I totally agree. He should play it this way. But I will be surprised if the Pubbies don't achieve at least a small gain. Unless things go south in Iraq.
Here is what the Slate thumbnail on the short list says about those cases:
Over a dissent, agreed that a 17-year-old girl could have an abortion without getting her parents' consent. The court was applying a Texas statute allowing an abortion without parental consent if the teenager asking for it "demonstrates that she is mature and sufficiently well informed." In a concurrence, Gonzales argued that the dissent's position—that exceptions to the rule of parental notification should be rare and require a high standard of proof—were policy decisions for the legislature, not the court. To construe the statute more narrowly than the text amounted to "an unconscionable act of judicial activism." (In re Jane Doe, 2000)
In another parental-notification case, the Supreme Court of Texas held that the teenager seeking an abortion had not established that she was sufficiently mature and well informed to do so without telling her parents. Because the girl's hearing took place a few days after the court issued its decision In re Jane Doe, Gonzales wanted to send the case back to the trial court, where the girl would have another chance. He explained that the evidence presented thus far did not prove that she had "thoughtfully considered her alternatives, including adoption and keeping the child" or that telling her parents about the abortion could subject her to emotional abuse. (In re Jane Doe 3, 2000)
If Slate is correct and one such case is him being defferential toward the legislature that made exceptions to the parental notification act broad, I don't see how conservatives can fault him. And wanting to remand another case to the lower courts in light of the prior decision does not seem judicially active to me either.
Is Slate misstating these cases? Is Gonzales getting a bumb rap? Do we know what his personal views on abortion and AA are?
AND, with electric locks that won't open when wet!
Well, this IS Slate, but let's assume they're not. :)
----Is Gonzales getting a bumb rap? Do we know what his personal views on abortion and AA are?----
Perhaps -- I don't consider ANY teenager who wants an abortion to be "mature and sufficiently well-informed". Period.
-Dan
Ginsburg gone would be great. But I'm worried about losing Rehnquist.
I think that most/all Freepers will be happy with a Cornyn appointment to the SC. He is 100% ACU as a Senator.
While a reactionary court might try to legislate to the right, a truly conservative court is not the opposite of a liberal court. A truly conservative court is a moderate court--one that does not actively change things.
Right but as a judge would you construe the law the legistlature wrote more narrowly to impose your personal view?
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatment for her colon cancer. Her sigmoid colon was removed on September 11, 1999 for what had been classified as stage-2 cancer. About 75% of stage-2 colon cancer patients are cured. The treatments began in October, 1999 and ended in June of 2000.
Justice Ginsburg who is 69 years of age had been taken ill while teaching this summer on the island of Crete. Her ailment was originally misdiagnosed as acute diverticulitis. This type of misdiagnosis happens fairly often because extensive testing is required to enable the medical professionals to distinguish between the two ailments.
Other justices who have been treated for cancer are John Paul Stevens, 85; Sandra Day O'Connor, 75, William H. Rehnquist
John Paul Stevens, who had prostate cancer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was treated for colon cancer, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, whose recent bout of thyroid cancer
******
Justice Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (born March 15, 1933) is a United States jurist. Since 1993, she has served as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ginsburg was born Joan Ruth Bader in Brooklyn, New York, the second daughter of Nathan and Celia Bader. Ginsburg's older sister died when she was very young; the neighborhood where she grew up was made up of working-class immigrants, most of them Jewish, Italian, and Irish.
Ginsburg's mother called her "Kiki" and took an active role in Ruth's education, taking her to the library often and applying for scholarships that would allow her to attend college. Celia struggled with cancer throughout Ruth's high school years and died the day before graduation, forcing Ginsburg to withdraw from giving the salutatorian speech she had planned for months. In school, classmates recalled Ginsburg as highly popular and competitive; she joined the twirling squad in high school.
She married Martin D. Ginsburg, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, in 1954, and has a daughter, Jane, and a son, James. She received her B.A. from Cornell University in 1954, attended Harvard Law School, and when her husband accepted a job in New York City, she tranferred to Columbia Law School, where she received her LL.B. degree. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959-1961. From 1961-1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963-1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972-1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford University, California from 1977-1978.
In 1971, Ginsburg was instrumental in launching the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU's General Counsel from 1973-1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974-1980. In this position, Ginsburg successfully argued several women's rights cases before the Supreme Court, including 1973's Frontiero v. Richardson.
******
Cancer has had a profound impact on Ginsburg's life. Her mother, Celia Bader, died of cervical cancer the night before young Ruth was to graduate from high school in 1948. Then, a few years after she married Martin Ginsburg in 1954 and while he was still in law school, her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Martin Ginsburg recovered and is a prominent tax lawyer and law professor. They have a grown son and daughter.
The Supreme Court and the Constitution (commentary from 1936)
-Dan
Get used to it, he's gotta be gone soon. I too will miss him.
Maybe the President should try to get in 3 decent, God loving, conservative women. If the dems come up against all three they will come off as women haters.
...and conversely the President will come off a women lover.
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Does anyone have a picture of her as young? I believe she is horribly wicked but I hope she repents before she dies.
It would be a dream come true seeing Stevens (well he's like 100 years old, isn't he?) and Ginsburg retiring. However Dubya shouldn't nominate Gonzales! Unless he gets, hmmmm, let's say 7 vacancies :).
Stevens is not even a Rockefeller republican. Harold Burton and Potter Stewart were Rockefeller republicans but not him. He acted like a "moderate" at the beginning of his tenure (f.ex. supporting death penalty, opposing racial quotas) but now is indistinguishable from Ginsburg. He is practically Jim Jeffords in a robe.
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