judicial activism

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 Tuesday I reported that an Arizona judge had ordered Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to stop pre-charging female prisoners for the transportation and security costs associated with their obtaining abortion services at a medical clinic. The American Civil Liberties Union had won its argument that the charges — which ranged from $300 to $900 [...]

A finding that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to own a gun could also provide more solid ground for recognition of the right to abortion, to sexual privacy, to gay marriage, and to a wide variety of other rights that conservative justices on the court and “originalist” Constitutional scholars have long opposed.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has taken his case against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to the public, explaining why he plans to vote against a nominee that even some in his own party are saying is among the most qualified candidates for the high court in decades.
Still, it’s not completely clear if he’s warning conservatives [...]

If you just started watching Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing during the statement of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), you might think you’d stumbled on a debate over semiotics rather than a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
“I’m deeply concerned by your assertion that the law is uncertain,” said Coburn. “We want justice to be predictable. I’m worried that [...]

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 [...]

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report analyzing the opinions of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and concluded, just as previous studies of her opinions have, that she is anything but a judicial activist.
Notwithstanding her much-decried “wise Latina woman” claim, it turns out Sotomayor is no liberal activist hell-bent on replacing the Constitution’s equal protection clause [...]

Amid the debate over Sotomayor’s supposedly “activist” move joining the per curiam opinion in the reverse discrimination case of Ricci v. DeStefano, there’s been little actual analysis of the legal standards the Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel’s decision was based on.
Although that may be because the panel did not issue a long written opinion [...]

Blogger Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft makes a great point this morning, writing that the Supreme Court under Chief Judge John Roberts has been an “activist” court — actively striking down legislation that allows for the use of racial classifications in some circumstances to remedy past discrimination — and that’s been A-OK with conservatives.
In fact, [...]

President Obama listed a variety of qualities that he is looking for in a Supreme Court justice, but conservatives have successfully hammered the left with just one — “empathy.”