DailyWrit

Earlier tonight, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama joined Pastor Rick Warren at his California megachurch for an event pegged as “The Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency.” The interviews, each an hour in length, were separated by thirty-six tense seconds in which the presumptive nominees shared the stage (and an awkward hug [video here!]). […]

Justice O’Connor may have retired from the Court in 2005, but her judicial career is still alive and well. She recently sat on a case in the Second Circuit and wrote the majority opinion (here)!
The case centered around a defendant, Scott Holyoke, who was notified that his call was subject to monitoring and proceeded to […]

I’ve updated my chart with laughter references on the Court. You can find the up-to-date iteration of the full chart here and you can read about my methodology here.

Justice
Total

Roberts
13

Stevens
6

Scalia
51

Kennedy
6

Souter
10

Thomas
0

Ginsburg
1

Breyer
12

Alito
3

Bryan Garner from LawProse.com has posted interviews (here) with 8 of the 9 members of the Court (Justice Souter did not participate.) I haven’t listened to all of them yet, but they seem to be chock-full of information for Supreme Court junkies. I for one will be referring to the comments made in these videos […]

Randy Newman sang a rather interesting song at the conclusion of the Macworld Keynote Speech. Here was the relevant portion of his song:
Its pissing me off a little that the Supreme Court is going to outlive me. Couple young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now, too. But I defy you to find […]

Justice Stephen Breyer has taken part in a groundbreaking new online forum that was launched today, BigThink.com. The site finds ‘experts’ in various fields and invites them to give candid interviews on a variety of topics. For a more indepth look, check out an article from the New York Times here.
Justice Breyer has always been […]

After finding the most talkative Justice, I was interested in finding the funniest Justice. According to my calculations, there were 51 total references to (Laughter.) in the court’s first two months of arguements. Here is the breakdown:

Case
JR
JPS
AS
AK
DS
CT
RBG
SB
SA
COUNSEL
TOTAL

Washington
1

2
3

Tom F.

0

Gall

1

2
3

Kimbrough

1

1

2

Torres
3

1

4

Santos

1

1

Watson

1
1

1

3

Stoneridge

1

1

Medellin

1
1

1

3

Klein

0

Ali

1

1

Williams

1

1

1
3

Logan

0

Danforth
1
2
3

6

CSX

2

1

3

Davis
2
1
1

1

1

6

John R.
1
1
1

1
4

Fed. Ex.

4

1
5

Hall

1
1

1
3

TOTAL
8
6
17
2
4
0
0
5
1
8
51

No surprises here. Scalia talks almost twice as much as everyone else. […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Michael Richards death penalty case. Richard’s attorney’s had computer difficulties and despite notifying the proper authorities, the judge in charge, Judge Sharon ‘Killer’ Keller slammed the door on them and forced the execution to proceed.
There are things that we can do. For years now, there has been a […]

Two months into the term, the Supreme Court has held oral arguments in 19 different cases. After reading a few of the transcripts, I thought it would be interesting to see which Justices spoke most often during oral arguments.
I found transcripts from the usual place and I copied the text into TextMate. From there, I […]

The WSJ Law Blog predicted that Justice Thomas would speak this morning during oral arguments. Unfortunately, they were wrong. I expected him to speak last year during one of the school board cases or during Morse.
As my avid readers will know, Justice Thomas hasn’t spoken during oral arguments in quite some time. The last time […]

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments (transcript) last week in Danforth v. Minnesota.
The debate in Danforth revolves around whether or not state courts need to respect boundaries set by the Supreme Court. In the 1989 case, Teague v. Lane, the Court held that their opinions cannot be retroactively applied by federal courts to grant defendants […]

UK’s The Telegraph created lists of the 100 most influential conservatives and the most influential liberals leading into the 2008 elections. John Roberts made number #8 on the conservative list, Antonin Scalia came in at #62, and Clarence Thomas came in at #85. John Paul Stevens, despite claiming to be a conservative, came in at […]

C-Span followed Clarence Thomas around his book release party at the home of Armstrong Williams. Its a rather amusing video with cameos from David Souter, Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, the ever-lovely Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham, Dick Cheney and a plethora of mid-major political stars and their spouses. Here […]

I blogged a few days ago about the surprising turn of events in which the Court refused to stay an execution on Tuesday but granted a stay in a nearly identical case on Thursday.
According to TheRegister (via Engadget), Michael Richards was unable to receive a stay on his execution because his attorney was 20 minutes […]

The New York Times features an editorial today about Clarence Thomas today entitled “The Angriest Justice.” The author argues that because Justice Thomas wrote a book that may not be “consistent with the dignity of the court,” he could be an impartial jurist.
The problem with Justice Thomas’s book, “My Grandfather’s Son,” is that it nurses […]