John Roberts

Excerpts released by C-SPAN in advance of its upcoming series on the Supreme Court, scheduled to begin airing October 4, suggest that some of the more conservative justices on the court are more wary of the impact their new colleague, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, may have on the court’s dynamic.
“To some extent, it’s unsettling,” says Chief [...]

Good catch by Matthew Yglesias: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the key Republican players in the Senate’s health care tussle, are telling reporters that a health care bill that fails to get 75 to 80 votes will, in Enzi’s words, “fail because the American people will have no confidence in it.”
By [...]

After a 12-hour “debate” yesterday during which senators largely repeated the same arguments for and against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that we heard during her confirmation hearing, the Senate is set to vote on the nominee today.
Although there’s no question that Sotomayor will be confirmed, she’s expected to receive only about ten Republican votes, [...]

After a week’s delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote this morning on the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. Although Sotomayor is expected to win the support of a majority of the committee’s members, the vote is almost certain to be sharply divided along party lines.
Except for the support of Republican Sen. [...]

It would seem to be a community of one. Rev. James David Manning, a New York preacher who gained fleeting Web meme status for a 2008 video (now at 2.5 million views) in which he called Barack Obama a “long-legged mack daddy,” is now hawking signs that ask the president to release his long-form certificate. [...]

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) just denounced Supreme Court Justice John Roberts’ disingenuous umpire theory of judging — his oft-quoted statement that the role of a judge is just to call “balls and strikes” as he sees them — with a harsh critique of what’s turned out to be remarkable “judicial activism” by the conservative majority [...]

Charlie Savage digs into the history of a well-remembered visit that Michael Jackson paid to the White House in 1984, and how a 29-year-old associate White House counsel named John Roberts — yes, that John Roberts — tried to stop the president from signing a letter congratulating the pop star. The whole thing’s a scream, [...]

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) has announced that he will vote against Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, making him the third senator to come out against Sotomayor, reports Congressional Quarterly.
Brownback joins Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in an anti-Sotomayor Dust Bowl trio.
“Judge Sotomayor has indicated through past rulings and in her [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court today avoided striking down the Voting Rights Act by broadening the ability of political subdivisions to bail out of the requirement that they get approval from the Justice Department for any changes in their election rules or procedures.
It was clear that some members of the court, at least, were reluctant to [...]

Legal bloggers are abuzz about Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-Pa.) swipe at Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in an exacting letter (pdf) Specter sent to nominee Sonia Sotomayor earlier this week about the kind of questions he plans to ask at her confirmation hearing.
As Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog writes: “Though the letter is [...]