Jeff Sessions

The Senate this afternoon confirmed Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 59 – 39, despite Republican efforts to filibuster his nomination. Republicans had criticized Hamilton for his rulings in a couple of cases involving abortion and religion during his 15-year tenure as a judge on the federal [...]

“This is war,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “I think the decision you’ve made to try these cases in federal court represents a policy and political decision.”

The Senate just voted 70 – 29 for cloture, meaning the nomination of David Hamilton to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will receive an up-or-down vote. The vote for cloture was a victory for the Obama administration and Senate Democrats who sought to push the nomination forward, and a loss for Sen. [...]

There’s growing attention today to the hypocrisy of Senate Republicans planning to filibuster the nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and to the Obama administration’s failure to make judicial nominations a higher priority.
NPR’s Nina Totenberg this morning had an excellent roundup on the issue, while The New York Times, [...]

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, just said on the Senate floor that he will vote against cloture on the nomination of David Hamilton, the district court judge in Indiana nominated to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Sessions earlier wrote a letter to his colleagues urging them to oppose [...]

Eight months ago, President Obama nominated Indiana judge David Hamilton for a seat on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. As Jeffrey Toobin reported, it was an uncontroversial, Republican-backed choice intended to “begin a profound and rapid change in the confirmation process and in the federal judiciary itself.”
Eight months later, Republicans are still filibustering Hamilton, [...]

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) kicked off the annual Federalist Society convention today with a call to oppose President Obama’s liberal nominees for the federal judiciary, Legal Times reports.
“We are in a long and difficult fight,” Sessions told the gathering of leading conservative lawyers, judges and law professors from around the country. Sessions was referring to [...]

On March 13, President Obama nominated Maryland civil rights lawyer Thomas J. Perez for the post of Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of Department of Justice. Six months later, Perez — currently Secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation — is being held up by Republican holds. Adam Serwer [...]

You know what Monday is, right? That’s the date, ordered by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, for the government to disclose the CIA inspector general’s 2004 report into the agency’s torture apparatus to the American Civil Liberties Union in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. That document, which according to reports is filled with grisly tales of [...]

As the Senate begins deliberation today on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the outcome of the vote is pretty clear. As the Los Angeles Times points out, “the only remaining questions are whether the National Rifle Assn. can claim to have swayed votes against her and whether President Obama can claim [...]