Tag Archives: Judicial Activism

News

Leftist ABA rates record number of Obama judicial appointees “not qualified”

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From Judicial Watch.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s quest to transform federal courts by appointing unqualified leftist ideologues is worse than previously imagined, according to a mainstream newspaper that reports the notoriously liberal American Bar Association (ABA) has rejected a “significant number” of potential judicial nominees, most of them minorities and women.

This is hardly earth-shattering news considering Obama’s judicial appointments so far. However, the ABA rebuff sheds light into the magnitude of the president’s crusade to stockpile the federal court system, where judges get lifetime appointments, with like-minded activists. In fact, Obama has made it an official policy to “diversify” the federal bench when it comes to gender, race and even life experiences.

But the White House has agreed not to nominate any candidates deemed unqualified by the ABA, the 400,000-member trade association that provides law school accreditation. Though it claims to be an impartial group of lawyers, the ABA usually takes liberal positions on divisive issues and Democratic/liberal nominees are more likely to receive the group’s highest rating of “well qualified” compared to their Republican/conservative counterparts. This has been documented in various studies, including a recent one conducted by political science departments at three Georgia universities.

With this in mind, one can only imagine how deficient Obama’s rejected candidates really are. Their identities and negative ABA ratings have not been made public, but inside sources tell the paper that broke the story this week that nearly all of the prospects were women or members of a minority group. Nine are reportedly women—five white, two black and two Hispanic—and of the five men one his white, two are black and two are Hispanic.

The number of Obama hopefuls stamped “not qualified” already exceeds the total opposed by the ABA during the eight-year administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the story points out. That means Obama’s rejection rate is more than triple what it was under either of those previous administrations.

I don’t know for sure, but I expect that the nominees would be people like Obama’s friends: the racist Jeremiah Wright, domestic terrorist Bernadine Dohrn and Marxist Bertha Lewis.

I posted this to highlight another way that electing an unqualified leftist harms the country. It’s no wonder that companies are shipping jobs overseas – what company would want to run afoul of a judge whose only judicial qualification is being a member of politicized left-wing hate groups?

News

Law professor uses same-sex marriage law to argue for legalizing polygamy

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From the Los Angeles Times.

Excerpt:

Jonathan Turley is probably not the most popular man right now with supporters of same-sex marriage. The George Washington University law professor has filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of Utah’s anti-polygamy laws — and his argument is based on a landmark 2003 Supreme Court gay rights decision. That’s not good news in the view of most gay rights supporters, who don’t want their cause linked to that of polygamists any more than they want to see parallels drawn with people who engage in incest, bestiality and other taboo sexual practices.

The Utah case involves Kody Brown, his legal wife, Meri Brown, and three other “sister wives.” It’s not actually about marriage, and it doesn’t challenge the right of the state to refuse to issue wedding licenses to polygamous families. The Browns are in court because they fear they will be prosecuted.

The 2003 gay rights case, Lawrence vs. Texas, was also a criminal matter unrelated to same-sex marriage. The court overturned the conviction of two men found to have violated a state law against same-sex sodomy. But in reaching that conclusion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy offered a paean to intimate relationships defined by sexuality that easily can be transferred to the context of same-sex marriage, and potentially to polygamous marriages as well:

“The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the [Constitution’s] due process clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.”

Kennedy emphasized in Lawrence that same-sex marriage wasn’t before the court. Similarly, in an interview with the New York Times, Turley suggested that decriminalizing polygamy will not inevitably lead to a movement for polygamous marriage.

This is what happens every time with liberal social policies like no-fault divorce, etc. First, offended victims of the mean, judgmental Christians are trotted out and sobbed over. Second, we are assured that de-criminalizing behaviors that the mean, judgmental Christians oppose will not hurt anyone. Third, Christians themselves abandon morality and support decriminalizing the behaviors because they they are more concerned about the sob stories of the “victims” than assessing the consequences of policy/law changes. Fourth, the predictable consequences of normalizing the behaviors are labeled as “unexpected” and require higher taxes and social programs to “fix”. It all starts with people who just don’t want to be told “no” – they just don’t like moral boundaries. And they don’t care who is harmed.

News

Supreme Court throws out anti-business class action lawsuit

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You have to read this post by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.

Except:

The Supreme Court took a big bite out of the pockets of class-action trial lawyers today, at least in the field of employment discrimination.  The court unanimously rejected a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of 1.6 million female employees that attempted to argue that the retail giant purposefully and systematically discriminated on gender for compensation.  But a narrow 5-4 rulingon a companion issue promises to make filing any more such class-action lawsuits nearly impossible:

The justices divided 5-4 on another aspect of the ruling that could make it much harder to mount similar class-action discrimination lawsuits against large employers.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the court’s conservative majority said there needs to be common elements tying together “literally millions of employment decisions at once.”

But Scalia said that in the lawsuit against the nation’s largest private employer, “That is entirely absent here.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court’s four liberal justices, said there was more than enough uniting the claims. “Wal-Mart’s delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores,” Ginsburg said.

The contrasting opinions gives a good indication of what is at stake.  In mostcorporations (especially national retail chains), compensation decisions are almost always delegated to individual locations or regional management.  For one thing, the labor market varies from region to region, and what amounts to competitive compensation in one region might be insufficient in another, depending on the cost of living, labor availability, and so on.

Ginsburg’s identification of this as a prima facie indication of discrimination would have exposed virtually all US retailers to such class-action lawsuits.  Not only would that have sapped retailers of billions in capital, but it doesn’t make any sense on its face anyway.  If compensation decisions are decentralized throughout an organization, how can that possibly demonstrate a coordinated, centralized, and explicit effort to discriminate on the basis of anything?

Reining in judicial activism and trial layers is a good way to incentivize corporations to create jobs. If you want to lower unemployment, stop these frivolous class-action lawsuits.

It’s also worth pointing out that lawsuits like this are bogus in a free market, because if people really area being underpaid, they can always go to a different employer to get a higher salary – IF THEY ARE WORTH IT. We really need a national loser-pays law to deter these nuisance lawsuits.