JUDGES AND POLITICS: OUR DISTORTED VIEW

In a recent Op-ed piece in the New York Times, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman bemoaned what he saw as the overreaction to the recent stories about Justice Antonin Scalia addressing a group of conservatives headed by Minnesota representative Michele Bachmann and about Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginny, working for a Tea Party lobby. “The core of the criticisms against Justices Thomas and Scalia has nothing to do with judicial ethics,” asserted Feldman. “The attack is driven by the imagined ideal of the cloistered monk-justice, innocent of worldly vanities, free of political connections and guided only by the gem-like flame of inward conscience.”

Citing the examples of John Marshall, Charles Evans Hughes, and William O. Douglas, Feldman demonstrated that politics and the Court have always mingled. Indeed, Hughes, pictured here, was the Republican nominee for president in 1916, only resigning from the Court after the party’s convention had started and the nomination was in the bag. He lost that election to Woodrow Wilson; then, fourteen years later was appointed by Republican president Herbert Hoover as Chief Justice. Of course, the man he succeeded as Chief Justice, William Howard Taft, had actual served as president, from 1913 to 1917.

WAS REAGAN A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN LINCOLN? KENNEDY BETTER THAN WASHINGTON? OBAMA BETTER THAN TEDDY ROOSEVELT?

GALLUP'S ANNUAL PRESIDENTS DAY POLL IS OUT

Ever since it began polling in the 1930s, the Gallup organization has asked Americans "who is the nation's greatest president?" This year, Ronald Reagan came out on top. Those polled tended to value recent presidents over those who served long ago. Lincoln did come in second, but Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kennedy, and George W. Buch all made the top ten. Jimmy Carter came in 12th. Not surprisingly, Republicans chose Reagan at a 38 percent clip (with George Washington coming in a distant second) while Democrats favored Bill Clinton at 22 percent (John Kennedy was second with 18).

Featured Guest Blogger Witold J. Walczak

CELL PHONE CAMERAS EXPOSED POLICE MISCONDUCT IN CAIRO; BUT HERE’S A SURPRISE: IF YOU SHOT THE SAME PICTURES IN THE US, YOU’D BE SUBJECT TO ARREST

A PLEA FOR A BROADER INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

By Witold Walczak

Are cell-phone cameras an indispensable tool in the fight for freedom, or an instrument of crime? The answer, which may surprise you, depends on who you ask and where you record. For instance, in the United States police regularly prosecute and harass amateur photographers, especially when they are recording police misconduct, and courts have been reluctant to declare such photography to be a constitutional right. But the recording of government officials performing their duties, especially in public places or where they have no expectation of privacy, is too important in promoting human and civil rights to be left without legal protection.

When Constitutions Fail: Egypt’s Continuing Conundrum

As Egypt struggled through a truly stunning transition of power this past week, discussion increasingly focused on the nation's Constitution. Yet when a constitution has been effectively suspended under Emergency Law for forty years, like Egypt’s has been, what power does it retain? The answer, we learned, is very, very little. The Constitution did not aid in transferring power (in fact, it was an impediment), it did not protect the Tahrir Square protesters (had there been fewer of them, they would have been rounded up and jailed, just as they had been in previous years), it did not prevent the military from finally unconstitutionally seizing control (it appears that this was the best of all outcomes, but the Constitution did not provide for it) and now that Hosni Mubarak is gone it has been cast aside, suspended by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which, lacking any authority but that provided by the barrel of a gun, dissolved the parliament and took full control of the process to consider amendments to the Constitution. Indeed, when the history of last week’s revolution is written – and this is what it was, a revolution, though a curiously non-partisan, leaderless one – the Constitution will be portrayed as at best a bystander; at worst, an agent of further tyranny.

JUSTICE SOUTER MAY HAVE RETIRED FROM THE SUPREME COURT, BUT HE IS STILL HEARING CASES

Justice David Souter retired from the Supreme Court in 2009 -- Justice Sonia Sotomayor took his seat -- but that doesn't mean that he has stopped being a judge. At oral argument in the First Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, Souter -- "riding circuit," as it used to be called -- sat as a member of a three-judge panel hearing a case about the placement of a cell tower in Alton, NH. (Souter is not the only retired justice still wearing robes: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has also spent some time on the appellate bench even though she left the High Court in 2007).

SUSAN NIELSEN, 2007 JENNINGS FELLOW, ON A NEW PROVOCATIVE GUN BILL

Unhealthy power: Individual mandate should unnerve liberals, too

A provocative new bill in South Dakota would require all adults 21 or older to buy a gun for self-defense. Most any kind of firearm will do. But get one within six months, please, or you'll be in violation of state law.

A Republican dreamed up this bill on a hunting trip, and supporters intend it as a half-serious slam against health care reform. Yet the idea raises a serious constitutional question for any Democrat who defends the individual mandate tucked inside President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement:

Are you sure the federal government should have the permanent authority to force people to buy stuff from private companies?

Full article at OregonLive.com.

LARA SETRAKIAN, 2007 JENNINGS FELLOW, TWEETS FROM TAHIR SQUARE

This is a clear and brutal siege on what had been a peaceful protest. Sirens in the background, helicopters overhead. More gunfire, and watching streams of men trying to break up the human chain protecting Tahrir Square from one direction. People linking arms, in rows 3-4 thick, have secured all but one of the entrances to Tahrir Square. They're getting charged by thugs. Women and children are still in the center of Tahrir Square. More gunshots. We are watching petrol bombs thrown from a building above, onto the crowd below.

News broken on twitter via @LaraABCNews, February 2, 2011

The Constitution in "Quotes"

“What they’re asking cannot be done,” one senior Egyptian official said, citing clauses in the Egyptian Constitution that bar the vice president from assuming power. Under the Constitution, the speaker of Parliament would succeed the president. “That’s my technical answer,” the official added. “My political answer is they should mind their own business.”

The New York Times, February 3, 2011, on reports that the Obama administration is pushing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak (left) to relinquish the presidency to Vice President Omar Suleiman (right).