Free Republic

U.S. Circuit Judge Christopher Droney of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit plans to take senior status at the end of June, providing President Donald Trump with yet another appointment opportunity, the judge confirmed to the New York Law Journal Monday. The Hartford-based appellate judge said the decision was driven by a desire to spend more time with his family, including grandchildren. He said while he’ll be taking senior status, he expected to remain an active member of the court and to continue to participate fully. “It’s been a privilege for me to be on the court...

Adam Liptak has an interesting article on Ricci v. DeStefano in the NYT. The unpublished order resolved the case without creating binding precedent for the Circuit. Perhaps this was an acceptable compromise because the panel eventually concluded that a written opinion based upon the particular facts in this case could create a problematic precedent; hard facts make bad law, etc. Yet this was not the end of the matter. Once it was clear other judges on the Circuit disagreed with the panel's disposition, a per curiam opinion was published, adopting the district court's reasoning as binding circuit precedent. Therefore, the...

Fewer than 6 percent of the cases decided by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals come from Connecticut. Still, people and issues from Connecticut are likely to be highly important in the upcoming confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, a 2nd Circuit judge for the past 12 years. Former Yale Law School Dean Guido Calabresi is a colleague of Sotomayor's on the appellate court. He first met her at Yale, when he was a professor and she was a student, and was impressed with her legal talents and personal attributes. Although Sotomayor is known for writing...

Washington, DC - Today, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a ruling by a federal court of appeals to stand that declared public schools cannot censor the religious viewpoints of students in class assignments. The case, Baldwinsville School District v. Peck, involved a school district's censorship of a kindergartner's art poster that contained a picture of Jesus. Liberty Counsel represents Antonio Peck, the student whose poster was censored. When attending kindergarten at Baldwinsville Elementary School in Syracuse, New York, Antonio's teacher instructed the class to draw posters regarding their understanding of the environment. Antonio drew a poster depicting children holding hands...

NEW YORK, Mar. 8 /Christian Wire Service/ -- In a stunning decision released on March 7th, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s second attempt to ban the phrase "Choose Life" from a pro-adoption specialty plate in New York State. The Attorney General’s first defeat occurred in January, 2005, when a federal judge ruled that The Children First Foundation (CFF) had sufficiently alleged constitutional violations involving freedom of speech and equal protection under the law. The August 2005 trial date was postponed when the state appealed the federal court ruling to the Second Circuit Court of...

Two federal appeals courts on opposite sides of the country declared the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Tuesday, saying the measure lacks an exception for cases in which a woman's health is at stake. The first ruling came from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hours later, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a similar decision in a 2-1 ruling. The New York decision affirmed a 2004 ruling by a judge who upheld the right to perform the procedure even as he described the procedure as...

<p>"How can the President of the United States detain a U.S. citizen on American soil and hold him without charge and without a lawyer, perhaps for years?" This is the question that apparently boggled the judicial mind in the Second Circuit's recent decision directing that Jose Padilla be turned loose by the U.S. military or surrendered to civilian prosecutors in the criminal justice system. Given the near certainty of further review by the full Second Circuit or the Supreme Court, the question remains important.</p>

Perhaps the Second Circuit was tired of the Ninth Circuit getting all the press. Sure, the Ninth Circuit is the most overturned circuit in the country, a status punctuated by jaw-dropping opinions like the one striking down the Pledge of Allegiance, but the Second Circuit has a reputation to defend as well. Showing that it can still offer an opinion truly worthy of reversal, a panel of the Second Circuit earlier this month upheld Vermont's comprehensive campaign-finance law, a statute that includes limits on campaign expenditures.Reaching this conclusion was no easy task for the Second Circuit. After all, the...