ConfirmThem

is a slam dunk.

Gotta love the slam on Breyer.

I have to say the more that I read from and about Justice Thomas, the more I am impressed with the man. He came to my law school last year and gave a talk for the students and faculty. He was candid, funny, and certainly gave me a newfound respect for the man. Even a friend of mine, big liberal who disagrees with me on nearly everything constitutional law related, was very impressed by Justice Thomas. All I can say is keep up the good work.

I just made a similar point as a comment to the last thread and even highlighted the "if history has taught" quote. My other favorite:

"What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today. Whatever else the Court's rejection of the segregationists' arguments in Brown might have established, it certainly made clear that state and local governments cannot take from the Constitution a right to make decisions on the basis of race by adverse possession. The fact that state and local governments had been discriminating on the basis of race for a long time was irrelevant to the Brown Court. The fact that racial discrimination was preferable to the relevant communities was irrelevant to the Brown Court. And the fact that the state and local governments had relied on statements in this Court's opinions was irrelevant to the Brown Court. The same principles guide today's decision."

that Breyer's dissent was "unanswerable" (according to Stevens' dissent)I wouldn't have spent the time reading Roberts' and Thomas's eloquent smackdowns of it.

Not.

end of term summaries, charts etc, located at http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/SuperStatPack.pdf

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm...

I can't see anyone leaving given the animosity that is being leveled all around in the court these days. I just can't see Stevens saying, "Sure, I'll walk and let you five conservatives become SIX conservatives and really bury everything I've done for years."

I'd love to see that .. Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg .. any or all of you :-)

Romney or Fred.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/SupremeCourt/story?id=3323935&page=1

"With a new lineup of justices, Ginsburg now finds herself writing dissents in the Supreme Court's most significant cases — and, with the Court's other three liberals, facing the reality that the Court is poised for profound and lasting change.

As the first full term for the new Roberts Court winds to a close, that notion seems to be sinking in for the liberals. Instead of landmark decisions, they're writing sharp dissents. And in almost all the big cases — and some not so big — they're increasingly eager to summarize their dissents from the bench to make their displeasure clear."

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

The kossacks are now saying Kennedy "hasn't drifted as far left" as Rehnquist did.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Guess it's about time Stevens learned the hard lessons Nino did back in '92.

http://www.slate.com/id/2169344/

"John Roberts is proving to be an extremely conservative chief justice. Which is what President Bush promised his supporters and what Roberts' lower-court record signaled—see in particular the Guantanamo case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Roberts may not go in for rhetorical swashbuckling, but he gets the job for the right done. As Adam Cohen put it in the Times last year, Roberts' votes are the product of his "predictable arch-conservatism."

And yet some liberal and moderate lawyers and academics didn't predict this at all. These members of the legal literati urged Roberts' nomination, promising that he would be a model of restraint and principle and modesty. Why did they think that then? And how do their arguments on his behalf look now?"

Only thing wrong with Thomas' concurrence is that he didn't read it from the bench (or did he?).

http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2007/06/commentary_the_5....

In a nasty new development, Lyle Denniston is telling everybody that the best way to get Anthony Kennedy to vote liberal is to shame him into it by condemning him in the press. Denniston is claiming that Kennedy's ego will not allow him to follow the Fab Four if his opinions are excoriated fiercely by liberals, especially his peers. Sounds like a desperation move by the liberals to me. I am very disturbed that a so-called "real" journalist would encourage a show of humiliation in order to change a jurist's mind rather than a well-thought out legal argument.

Bennett (R-UT), Yea? :(

Hatch (R-UT), Nay! :)

http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2007/06/justice_kennedy_1...

"One must look way back in the Court's history to find any single Term where one Justice had comparable success. Justice Kennedy's two dissenting votes tied Justice Brennan’s output in October Term 1968; with a larger caseload back then, though, Justice Brennan’s feat that Term is arguably more impressive. Still, one must go further back to Justice Byron White’s October Term 1964 to find a circumstance where a Justice bested Kennedy and dissented only once over the course of a full Term, with no extenuating circumstances such as justice turnover (which can lead to misleading numbers).

The bottom line is that, by most measures, Justice Kennedy’s October Term 2006 has been the most successful Term by a single justice in roughly 40 years."

In 33 of 39 cases heard the last two terms, the Ninth was reversed. Wow.

Who else is good (relatively) on the 9th other than Kozinski, Callahan, Ikuta, & Randy Smith?

Well, at least a few this month. Settle of Washington and Sullivan of New York have been confirmed by roll call (!) votes. Maybe there will be a few more by consent.

Not much, but better than nothing.

Everyone knows Kennedy is the justice most susceptible to the Greenhouse effect. He has an ego the size of Alaska, and I have no doubt in my mind that the liberals started getting loud in their dissents to have this precise effect. Kennedy will probably continue to sign on to the conservative side in most cases, but water down their effects to get positive mentions by people like Lyle Denniston and other liberal journalists. There won't be any real shifts to the right without a fifth conservative. For many reasons including the Democrat ascendancy (and ruthlessness) in the Senate, that will be very difficult.

at Kennedy will be opposite to the intended effect, i.e. driving him more into the conservatives' arms and his own conservative (albeit "Vanilla" re Helms) roots?

Sigh. I guess no surprise retirement announcements are in the offing. On the other hand, if it's to be a surprise, then I wouldn't know ahead of time, now would I? Is that cryptic enough for you? And remember, while I am a friend of a GOP senator's chief of staff, I've neither heard (nor solicited) any information on this subject.

Also very good are O'Scannlain, Bybee, Rymer, Bea, Kleinfeld, Tallman, and Clifton.

Which, as we all know, is very unlikely.
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