Today’s U.S. Supreme Court justices, critics cry, are serving longer than ever (darned improved life expectancy!). And because these people just won’t go away, the court risks becoming an institution where ideological swings have long-lasting impact (or damage), and where present decisions are made by justices grounded in the past. So legal scholars and amateur court watchers are at it again, agitating for the end of life terms on the nation’s highest court. One oft-quoted and particularly alarming statistic, from Northwestern’s Steven Calabresi and James Lindgren, shows that ... Read More
A Politicized Supreme Court Doesn’t Faze the Public?
September 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
This week, the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the health care law that has divided the country (and, until now, federal appeals court judges). The request sets up what likely will be a legal showdown in the coming high court term — right in the thick of a presidential election. And it promises to be a particularly eventful case: critics on the left want Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself because of his wife’s activism opposing the law, while critics on the right want Elena Kagan to do the same because of her earlier job as the ... Read More
Nominees Not as Slippery as We Think
July 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Elena Kagan has spent much the first few days of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week mired in meta-questions — questions about the ways in which she answers questions (or, rather, doesn't answer them, in contradiction to her past criticism of nominees who did the exact same thing). The back-and-forth fits a popular narrative about the confirmation ritual: Robert Bork was too candid for his own good in 1987, and nominee evasiveness has been on the rise ever since. The phenomenon even has a name: "the Ginsburg rule," which recalls the first post-Bork would-be justice to figure ... Read More
May It Diminish the Court
June 15, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
The country has certainly witnessed politicized Supreme Court nominations in recent times, from Justice Samuel Alito — whom Democrats tried to brand as hyper-conservative — to Justice Clarence Thomas, who characterized his Senate confirmation hearings as "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves." At some level, every nomination to the court is politicized given the stakes involved in controlling its ideological path. President Obama's nomination of federal appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor is unlikely to be an exception to this rule. As ... Read More
