Free Republic

Complete title: Justice Department Resists Releasing Records That Could Shed Light on Whether Justice Kagan Needs to Recuse Herself from Health Care Case (CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department is contesting in federal court a Freedom of Information Act request filed by CNSNews.com that seeks department records that could shed light on the question of whether Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan needs to recuse herself from legal challenges to the health-care reform law President Barack Obama signed last March.The case—the Media Research Center v. the U.S. Justice Department—arises from a complaint the Media Research Center filed on Nov. 23, 2010 against the Justice Department...

In a final bit of written testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on her nomination Tuesday, Elena Kagan indicates that she will not step aside from a case challenging the controversial health care law if she's confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court. Kagan's comments were prompted by a letter sent to her by all seven committee Republicans asking her about her role as Solicitor General in developing a strategy to defend the federal government from a lawsuit—still in its preliminary stages--challenging the health care law that passed earlier this year. It is widely expected that at least...

Complete title: Senate Republicans Demand Answers from Kagan Bearing on Potential Legal Requirement That She Recuse Herself from Obamacare Case (CNSNews.com) - All seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter today to Solicitor General Elena Kagan demanding information about whether she at any time as a member of the Obama administration discussed the suit filed by Florida and numerous other states challenging the constitutionality of the health-care law signed by President Barack Obama--an action that under federal law could require Kagan to recuse herself from the case if she is confirmed as a justice and it comes before the...

The fallout is already coming from this year's Supreme Court Caperton decision on judicial bias, and it isn't good. A new rule on judicial recusal in Michigan shows how the decision could expose nearly every judge to charges of prejudice. In Caperton v. Massey, the Supremes set out a new standard requiring judges to recuse themselves if there is a "probability of bias" in a case. That was a marked departure from historical standards, which required a judge to step off primarily when he had a direct financial interest. Under the new rule, created by the Michigan Supreme Court to...

The march away from a credible, accountable judiciary took another leap yesterday, as a 5-4 Supreme Court majority gave federal judges unprecedented oversight of state court recusal standards. This is more damaging than it sounds. West Virginia's Massey coal company CEO Don Blankenship spent some $3 million in 2004 on the judicial election of Brent Benjamin to the state Supreme Court of Appeals, including donations to outside groups. When a case involving Massey later came before Judge Benjamin's court and he ruled in favor of Massey, the loser sued and claimed a denial of due process because the judge didn't...

June 30, 2006 About half the timber land in Santa Cruz County will remain off limits to loggers after a ruling by the California Supreme Court on Thursday. The 4-3 decision in favor of Santa Cruz County over Davenport-based Big Creek Lumber grants a local government the power to restrict timber operations to certain areas. Historically, logging was under the purview of the state; the court's ruling validates Santa Cruz County's 7-year-old law regulating where trees can and can't be logged.

WHEN IT HEARS ARGUMENTS IN Hamdan v. Rumsfeld this Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Bush administration can try Guantanamo detainees in special military tribunals, or whether the detainees' cases have to be heard in federal court. In the run-up to the hearing, liberal proponents of federal judicial involvement declared their own war--on Justice Scalia's right to participate in the legal debate.It began with a Newsweek report about a speech Scalia delivered on March 8 at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland. (Unfortunately, no transcript of his remarks has been published.) There, Justice Scalia allegedly told attendees that...

Click here to read a letter from Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., a Trustee Professor of Law at the University of PensylvaniaClick here to read a letter from Ronald D. Rotunda, a Professor of Law at George Mason University

Does John Roberts have an ethics problem? Three ethics professors argue that Roberts, whom President Bush has just nominated to be chief justice, should have disqualified himself from a case he helped decide earlier this year while serving as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which concerns a key issue in the administration's war on terrorism, may be headed for the Supreme Court, and at the time of the appeals court ruling, Roberts was being considered for a vacancy on the high court, though it did not yet exist....

WASHINGTON - Two Democratic senators said Wednesday that they want Supreme Court nominee John Roberts to explain before his confirmation hearings why he continued to judge a lawsuit against the Bush administration while being interviewed to be a justice. "It is clear that you have long understood the ethical issues raised by continuing to work on a case in which a party is considering you for another position," Judiciary Committee Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin said in a letter to Roberts. White House spokesman Steve Schmidt said in response that "the opponents of Judge...

A short time ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney. Many editorial writers are now insisting that Justice Scalia should recuse himself from a pending case in which two public-interest groups are suing Cheney: They want him to turn over the records of the energy task force of which he is a member. Does the law require Justice Scalia to recuse himself? There is a statute on the subject, which lists various grounds for disqualification (e.g., the judge has a financial interest in the case, or the judge served as a lawyer in...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Thirteen members of the House of Representatives have called on Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from any Supreme Court cases involving abortion. The representatives based their request on the associate justice’s recently reported ties to a feminist organization that supports abortion rights, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. Ginsburg, an associate justice, spoke in January in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture Series on Women and the Law, which NOW Legal Defense helped sponsor. A photo of Ginsburg with the organization’s president, Kathy Rodgers, is on the homepage of the NOW Legal Defense website. According to the congressional...

(CNSNews.com) - A group of Republican congressmen are calling on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from abortion-related cases because of her close ties to NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. In a letter to Ginsburg, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) and 12 other Republicans, including Reps. Dave Weldon and Sue Myrick, pointed to a March 11, 2004 LA Times report that said "in January, Ginsburg gave opening remarks for the fourth installment in the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series on Women and the Law." "Two weeks earlier," the paper reported, "she had voted in a...

<p>Our colleagues in the editorial-writing business came in for a pasting yesterday, and we have to say we've rarely enjoyed a Supreme Court memorandum more. Justice Antonin Scalia's memo explaining why he won't recuse himself from a case regarding Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force is a smackdown for the ages.</p>

WASHINGTON — Thirteen Republican members of Congress on Thursday asked Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to withdraw from all future cases having to do with abortion because of her affiliation with the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. The House lawmakers said in a letter to the liberal justice that they were concerned about her loaning her name and presence to the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series, which is co-sponsored by the defense fund, because the fund often files legal briefs in cases before the high court. --SNIP--

Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court bluntly rejected demands today that he step aside in a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney, mocking criticism that a duck hunting trip that the two were on together in January indicated possible favoritism for his longtime friend. "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," Justice Scalia wrote in a 21-page memorandum bristling with defiance and offering lessons in the ways of Washington. The Sierra Club, which had formally demanded Justice Scalia's...

Some highlights: "My recusal would also encourage so-called investigative journalists to suggest improprieties, and demand recusals, for other inappropriate (and increasingly silly) reasons." "When I learned that Sierra Club had filed a recusal motion in this case, I assumed that the motion would be replete with citations of legal authority, and would provide some instances of of cases in which, because of activity similar to what occurred here, Justices have recused themselves or at least have been asked to do so. In fact, however, the motion cites only two Supreme Court cases assertedly relevant to the issue here discussed, and...

WASHINGTON - A defiant Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) refused Thursday to remove himself from a case involving his good friend, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), dismissing suggestions of a conflict of interest. In an unusual 21-page memorandum, he rejected a request by the Sierra Club (news - web sites). The environmental group said it was improper for Scalia to take a hunting trip with Cheney while the court was considering whether the White House must release information about private meetings of Cheney's energy task force. Scalia said the remote Louisiana hunting camp...

Daughter's teen pregnancy and failed shotgun marriage played a part in rulingWASHINGTON, March 4, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The late Harry Blackmun was the Supreme Court Justice who supported and authored the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which sanctioned the legalization of murder by striking down the US abortion law. In an interview Sunday, Blackmun's daughter Sally Blackmun, the executor of his private papers, revealed the background behind his ruling. The interview is a result of her decision to release his private documents for public purview this week. According to his daughter, Justice Blackmun's choice to strike down the abortion law...

<p>The Supreme Court yesterday said Justice Antonin Scalia would decide on his own whether to withdraw from a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney.</p> <p>The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch are trying to force Mr. Cheney to release the records of the national energy-policy group, and requested that Justice Scalia recuse himself from the case because he went on a hunting trip with Mr. Cheney one month after the court agreed to hear the case.</p>