Archive for the 'Congress' Category
Does the Senate Have the Constitutional Authority to Refuse to Seat a Blagojevich Appointee?
4 Comments Published by James December 18th, 2008 in Congress, Constitutional Law, Current Events, Election Law, History, Politics, Presidential ElectionOn Monday, in response to a complaint from the United States Department of Justice alleging that Governor Milorad “Rod” Blagojevich had solicited bribes and engaged in a massive conspiracy to commit fraud, the Illinois House voted 113-0 to begin impeachment proceedings. Blagojevich has not yet been indicted. On December 10th, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [...]
Federal Judiciary Doesn’t get COLA for 2009
1 Comment Published by Kedar December 12th, 2008 in Congress, Judicial Salaries, Justices and JudgesTony Mauro has a
Final Briefs Filed in Kennedy Rehearing
0 Comments Published by Kedar September 25th, 2008 in Congress, Constitutional Law, Court Procedure, Death PenaltyThe state of Louisiana and attorneys for Patrick Kennedy have filed petitions arguing whether or not the Court should rehear the landmark death penalty case as a result of research oversight. The original petition for rehearing can be found here. You can find the Petitioner’s brief in opposition of rehearing here, the Respondent’s brief in [...]
Judges Have Lives Too
0 Comments Published by Kedar September 22nd, 2007 in Congress, Court Procedure, Justices and JudgesThe folks over at the Sentencing Law and Policy blog (creatively named after a textbook published with the same name and written by the same authors) have broken the news of Federal District Judge Paul Cassell’s retirement. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a major issue, but the WSJ law blog highlights the most important part of [...]
J. Scott Jennings Has The Worst Job EVER
1 Comment Published by Kedar August 2nd, 2007 in Congress, PoliticsJ. Scott Jennings, the 29-year old aide to Karl Rove, was forced to go in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about the US Attorney Scandal. As soon as I read the title to the New York Times article,”With Rove Absent, Aide Is Grilled by Senate Panel”, I knew it was going to [...]
Court-Packing Is A Terrible Idea OR How Do You Solve A Problem Like Alito?
1 Comment Published by Kedar July 28th, 2007 in Circuit Courts, Congress, Constitutional Law, Court Procedure, Democrats, History, Politics, Supreme CourtI admit that I made a slight mistake in yesterday’s post about Snarlin’ Arlen and his attack on judicial independence- I asserted, without clarifiying, that there was nothing “a Senator can do to a Supreme Court Justice save for pushing for impeachment.” Some very intelligent people have been arguing that Congress can reign in these [...]
What Happened Between Congress and the Supreme Court in March of 1837?
3 Comments Published by Kedar July 28th, 2007 in Congress, Constitutional Law, History, Republicans, Supreme CourtAs I was doing research for a post about the latest Court-packing plan (suggestion?) and I stumbled across a rather interesting set of events. Here are the facts that I know: In March of 1937, the Democratic President Andrew Jackson was wrapping up his wildly divisive, eight-year Presidency. His hand picked successor, Martin Van Buren, [...]
Sorry Arlen, But You Can’t Return Supreme Court Justices
2 Comments Published by Kedar July 27th, 2007 in Civil Liberties, Congress, Constitutional Law, John Roberts, Judicial Activism, Justices and Judges, Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Supreme CourtApparently Arlen Specter isn’t particularly happy with the recent Stare Decisis-related performances of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. I’m not exactly sure what he wants to do about it, but it looks like he just wants to take a look at past decisions and remarks from the two Justices and decide whether or not [...]
Tom Delay is Still Alive, FYI
2 Comments Published by Kedar July 25th, 2007 in Congress, RepublicansTom Delay is still firing political missiles into the fray from his blog over at TomDelay.com. Today he posted about Congress’s pork-barrel spending and cited an article from the folks at FreedomWorks. Tom drew particular attention to a few earmarked items in the bill: $21.4 million for a program educating older adults on a healthy [...]
Harry’s Filibuster Dreams Shattered
0 Comments Published by Kedar July 18th, 2007 in Congress, Filibuster, Iraq, PoliticsPoor Harry Reid. He went out on a limb and kept the Senate in session way longer than he had to and he got burned. By a vote of 52-47, the Senate rejected the vote for cloture which would have forced a vote on the Reed/Levin Amendment. I’ve been watching sporadically all night and the [...]



