The Vindication of Jeff Sessions
By: Byron York

Chief Political Correspondent
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Th...s-46488897.html

05/30/09 10:00 PM EDT

Few politicians — few people, really — get to do what Jeff Sessions has done. Back in 1986, when he was a rising star in his home state of Alabama, Sessions was nominated for a seat on the federal courts. A conservative Republican, Sessions was attacked by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Patrick Leahy, and other powerful Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who accused him of racial insensitivity and argued he was not qualified for the bench. They voted down the nomination and sent Sessions home to Alabama in defeat.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Ten years later, after serving as attorney general of his state, Sessions ran for the Senate and won. Returning to Washington, he secured a spot on the Judiciary Committee, taking his place alongside Kennedy, Leahy and the other Democrats who had beaten him up so badly in 1986. You want to talk about living well being the best revenge? Whenever the Judiciary Committee meets, Sessions looks across the table at the very men who tried, unsuccessfully, to derail his career.

And now Sessions has taken another step up. In early May, he became the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, which means that when the television lights go on for the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, the senator from Alabama will be running the show on the Republican side. It’s quite a journey from those bad days of 1986.

Jeff Sessions, 62, grew up Hybart, Ala., a tiny town in the southern part of the state where his father owned a country store. Young Jeff came from no particular political tradition; ask him where his conservatism comes from, and he’ll tell you about B.W. Dickey, his high school English teacher.

“He called me aside one day,” Sessions recalls, “and said, ‘Jeff, you’ve got good values and you need to be armed when you go off to college. You should subscribe to National Review.’” Sessions took the advice and was soon reading, dictionary at his side, William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, and the other stars of the bible of the rising conservative movement.

Sessions went to college at Huntingdon, a small liberal arts school in Montgomery. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do after getting a degree in history, and he decided to try being a teacher, spending a year with a sixth-grade class — he taught all subjects — at a small Montgomery school. “It was the end of segregation, but there were still some schools that were virtually all African-American,” Sessions says. “I think my class was all African-American. I really worked hard at it, but I’m afraid I learned as much as my students.”

There were no lawyers in the Sessions family, but at some point Jeff realized he was temperamentally disposed toward the profession. “I loved the rigor of the debate,” he says. In 1970, he enrolled in the University of Alabama Law School, and after graduation practiced briefly before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Mobile. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan chose him for the post of U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. It was a job he loved. “I believe we had the finest U.S. Attorney’s Office in America,” Sessions says. “That was our goal.”

After a few years in the office, Sessions got the call from the White House telling him he had been chosen for a seat on the United States District Court in Alabama. It was quite an honor, at least until he got to Washington for the confirmation hearing.

A new era was beginning in the Senate’s history of judicial confirmations. The old days, when most confirmations were pro forma affairs, were coming to a close, and a new period, in which both sides fought pitched ideological battles, was opening. Sessions was to become the first casualty.

Democrats accused him of having made racially insensitive remarks, including allegedly calling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People “un-American.” (He allegedly said the same of the American Civil Liberties Union.) The critics also accused Sessions of mounting a racially motivated voter fraud investigation. Sessions said it wasn’t true — at one point, he was reduced to declaring, “I am not a racist” — but his opponents were determined. Sessions was defeated in the Judiciary Committee when two Republicans, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Charles Mathias of Maryland, joined Democrats in voting to kill the nomination.

Today the affair lives on in old news clips. A few years ago, when Sessions appeared on “Meet the Press” to discuss confirmations, he found himself staring at an old image of Kennedy speaking in 1986. “Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past,” Kennedy said. It wasn’t something Sessions enjoyed reliving.

“That was the most unkind thing that has ever been said about me,” Sessions says. “It was exceedingly painful to hear someone of that prominence make that statement, and it was hurtful because it wasn’t true.”

After his defeat, Sessions went back to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where he served several more years before deciding, in 1995 at the age of 49, to run for state attorney general, his first stab at elective office. He won, and two years later ran successfully for the Senate.

In his 12 years in office, Sessions has put together an unquestionably conservative record. The Washington-based American Conservative Union, which rates lawmakers on a liberal-to-conservative scale of 1 to 100, has given Sessions a lifetime rating of 95, which puts him among the handful of the most conservative members of the Senate.

Conservative, but not always Republican. When the president of Sessions’ party, George W. Bush, pushed a comprehensive immigration reform proposal, he found an implacable opponent in the senator from Alabama. “As a former prosecutor, it was just unthinkable that we would have this massive lawlessness,” Sessions says, referring to the unstemmed flow of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. “And to pass new laws that weren’t going to be any more enforced than the old ones was just as unthinkable.”

In the immigration fight, Sessions was fighting not only the president but Kennedy. At other times, Sessions and Kennedy have found themselves on the same side of an issue, as they did in co-sponsoring a bill to reduce the incidence of prison rape. “We have gotten along pretty well,” Sessions says of his old nemesis.

In addition, Sessions enjoys pointing out that when another senator who opposed him in 1986, Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter, was asked recently whether he regretted any of the thousands of votes he has cast in the Senate, Specter mentioned just one: voting against Sessions. “I have since found that Senator Sessions is egalitarian,” Specter told reporters.

Sessions hasn’t forgotten, but today he is for all appearances a man who is happy where he is, who doesn’t dwell on the past. “I don’t have any problem putting that aside,” Sessions says. “You can’t dwell on those things. If I had been confirmed as a judge, I’d be reading briefs today. How can you complain about that?”

Byron York writes a political column every Tuesday and Friday and blogs regularly for ExaminerPoliticis.com.

May 28, 2009

Sotomayor's and Obama's Identity Politics Leave Blind Justice at Risk:
Can Sotomayor keep her biases in check?
For the Constitution's sake, we'd better find out

The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org)
by Robert Alt

My late constitutional law professor once offered the following hypothetical about a fishing dispute that made its way to court. On one side were Native Americans; on the other, environmentalists. After a pregnant pause, he mused: "What's a liberal to do?" Were he to teach the class today, he might well have asked, "What's an empathetic judge to do?"

As this hypothetical illustrates, empathy, the factor by which President Obama claims that he selects his judicial nominees, is highly subjective, and provides little direction for judges. In some cases, all of the parties are sympathetic. In other cases, none are. In still other cases, the law may be unambiguously on the side of a party who is less sympathetic.

If empathy is the guiding principle, how is a judge to decide these cases? And how do we separate empathy from personal bias?

Here, then, is a modest proposal: In choosing nominees, President Obama should seek judges who would apply the Constitution and the laws as they are written, and interpret them consistent with their plain and original meaning.

Contrary to the frequent howls from the left, interpreting statutes and even the Constitution is not so difficult or arcane a task that judges need resort to tea leaves or to breathe subjective "life" into documents. Yes, in some cases this will lead to decisions that the judges personally consider bad policy. In these cases there is a corrective in the legislature, whose job it is--with apologies to Judge Sotomayor--to make policy.

Not only is this the correct understanding of a judge's role, it's the one that resonates best with the American people. A November 2008 nationwide survey commissioned by the Federalist Society found that 70 percent of voters want judges who "will interpret and apply the law as it is written and not take into account their own viewpoints and experiences" over judges who "will go beyond interpreting and applying the law as written and take into account their own viewpoints and experiences."

But Obama said recently that he wants judges whose personal preferences affect the outcome of their decisions. In a speech before Planned Parenthood, then-candidate Obama said: "We need somebody who's got the heart--the empathy--to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old--and that's the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges."

President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, takes this line of reasoning a step further, questioning whether it is possible for judges to overcome personal sympathies or biases "in all or even in most cases." She even seems to think that ruling based upon these biases is somehow patriotic: "I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society."

And apparently she finds the differences between ethnicities to be profound, in a way that most reasonable people will find profoundly disturbing. She infamously claimed that she "hope[s] that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." She also stated that physiological differences based on national origins "will make a difference in our judging," and grants some credence to the idea that race or ethnicity may lead to "basic differences in logic and reasoning."

In light of these disturbing quotes, the question must be asked--and hopefully asked repeatedly by senators--will these stereotypes and identity politics inform Judge Sotomayor's "empathy?" As U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Todd Gaziano, responding to these claims, has stated: "[T]his is not a potential example of 'reverse discrimination.' At issue is the same, old, ugly racial discrimination and stereotypes as before--just in furtherance of different groups."

Among the images of justice at the Supreme Court is Themis, the famous statue of lady justice holding a scale while wearing a blindfold. She represents the role of a judge--someone oath-bound to impartially "administer justice without respect to persons." President Obama and Judge Sotomayor's fealty to identity politics clashes with this proper role.

Senators must question Judge Sotomayor carefully to assess whether she can genuinely put aside her biases, or, as she seems to have done in the past, embrace them. The American people deserve to know whether she will serve the Constitution--or identity politics.

Robert Alt is a senior legal fellow and deputy director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).

First Appeared in US News & World Report

If you aren't in one of those groups, bend over.

Here's some good and bad.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/sotomay.../29/219433.html

Lawyers Tag Sotomayor as Terror on the Bench

Friday, May 29, 2009 9:27 AM

By: Tom LoBianco, The Washington Times Article Font Size

Lawyers who have argued cases before Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor call her "nasty," "angry" and a "terror on the bench," according to the current Almanac of the Federal Judiciary - a kind of Zagat's guide to federal judges.

The withering evaluation of Judge Sotomayor's temperament stands in stark contrast to reviews of her peers on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Of the 21 judges evaluated, the same lawyers gave 18 positive to glowing reviews and two judges received mixed reviews. Judge Sotomayor was the only one to receive decidedly negative comments.

Judge Sotomayor's demeanor on the bench will be one of the issues the Senate Judiciary Committee tackles when she appears for her confirmation hearing. A lack of a good temperament has been used as a line of attack against nominees in the past - most notably conservative Judge Robert H. Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was defeated.

But several lawyers and legal scholars on a call organized by the White House said the criticism is misplaced and that Judge Sotomayor's legal acumen is overwhelming.

"She does not suffer fools gladly," said Kevin Russell, a partner for Howe & Russell P.C. who argued a case before Judge Sotomayor about respiratory ailments suffered by the men and women who cleaned up ground zero after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "I guess it is predictable that some of those fools would then complain about it."

Much of the public vetting of Judge Sotomayor, whom President Obama nominated to be the first Hispanic woman to sit on the nation's highest court, has focused on her range of rulings on hot-button social issues.

Although the same lawyers who chastised her temperament gave her high marks on her legal abilities, Judge Sotomayor was the only member of the 2nd Circuit to receive a universally negative review of her temperament.

"She really lacks judicial temperament. She behaves in an out-of-control manner. She makes inappropriate outbursts," one lawyer told the almanac. Another said she "abuses lawyers."

The authors of the almanac interviewed at least eight lawyers who practice regularly before the judges and granted them anonymity so that they could provide candid assessments, said Megan Rosen, the editor of the almanac. The guide profiles every federal judge.

Ms. Rosen said that although Judge Sotomayor's evaluations in the area of temperament were harsh, lawyers clearly respect her abilities - something not true of every judge reviewed in the almanac.

"Generally, when lawyers have respect for a judge it shows in all their other categories," Ms. Rosen said. "If you know it's just the general demeanor of the judge, it can help ease some of the tension that would otherwise be there."

The lawyer reviews cover the rulings, political leanings and legal abilities of the jurists. The almanac, published in November, said Judge Sotomayor writes good opinions, is liberal but careful to follow precedent and has good legal abilities.

"She is a direct and candid questioner," said Thomas H. Dupree Jr., a former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general who has argued five cases before Judge Sotomayor since 2007.

People often mistake her intensity for aggression and anger, Judge Sotomayor told the Associated Press in 1998.

During a high-profile national security case heard by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in December, Judge Sotomayor gave the attorney for a Canadian man who had been detained by U.S. forces little room to work.

Judge Sotomayor interrupted the lawyer, David Cole, numerous times about whether there was standing for a U.S. court to hear the case, before eventually explaining her aggressive questioning.

"That's why I'm trying to figure out and untie your arguments a bit," Judge Sotomayor told Mr. Cole.

Legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen documented concerns from 2nd Circuit law clerks and New York prosecutors in a piece he wrote for the New Republic earlier this month. In the piece, he quoted anonymous members of the New York legal community who described Judge Sotomayor as an intellectual lightweight and "kind of a bully on the bench."

On the White House-organized call, Judge Sotomayor's colleagues praised her careful reading of laws and characterized her as a judge bent on restraint and narrow readings of statutes.

Lawyers on the call couched her aggressive questioning as a product of a "hot bench" and poring over details meticulously.

Judge Sotomayor's judicial temperament was raised during her 1997 confirmation hearing to the appeals court. Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who recently became the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Judge Sotomayor that she was out of bounds when she criticized mandatory minimum sentences from the bench during one sentencing proceeding.

"I do think that a judge, would you not agree, has to be careful in conducting themselves in a way that reflects respect for the law and the system," Mr. Sessions said.

Judge Sotomayor said she probably should not have used the word "abomination" to describe the guidelines, but that her record showed she didn't let her personal opinions affect her rulings.

"I do what the law requires, and I think that is the greatest respect I could show for it," she told Mr. Sessions.

Harvard law professor and Obama mentor Charles Ogletree said lawyers caught off guard by Judge Sotomayor's demeanor who criticize her are "misconstruing her sense as a well-prepared judge, one who is not on a fishing expedition."

Conservative activists have decided on attacking Judge Sotomayor as a judicial activist who would work outside the rule of law. The Judicial Confirmation Network, which is leading a coalition of conservative groups, is airing an ad featuring Judge Sotomayor talking about whether judges set policy from the bench.

Yes, that is so important to understand, i.e., his candidates for "the bench" don't even have to be able to read and decipher law - just have feelings or experiences in order to empathize with those before them.

'Gubmit' by empathy rather than Government by Law!; seems we've been on tha road before, doesn't it!

I suppose one could empathize with the "emotional killer" (he just couldn't bear any more killing of babies) by Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions who has done over 60,000 of those procedures in his years of practice in Wichita, Kansas!

Oops, wait a minute - the shooter was a white male, wasn't he? Sorry, he doesn't count!

Supreme Court justices are appointed for life.

Yep, that sword can cut both ways, but it usually only counts for poor kids that grew up in the mean streets and are angry at society for screwing them over.

Supposedly to keep them from political pressures.

Like Scalia? He's about as compromised as can be possible.

Well, if there's gonna be teams, you can't blame the Repubs for supporting their own.

Nothing wrong with Scalia.

Legal philosophy and approach

[edit]Statutory and constitutional interpretation


Justice Scalia (right) poses with Chief Justice of Puerto Rico Federico Hernández Denton in 2006.
A formalist, Scalia is considered the Court's leading proponent of textualism and originalism (he is careful to distinguish his philosophy of original meaning from original intent). These schools of jurisprudence emphasize careful adherence to the text of both the Constitution of the United States and federal statutes as that text would have been understood to mean when adopted. Scalia will typically use dictionaries contemporaneous with the text's adoption to discern its meaning.
By implication from his originalism, Scalia vigorously opposes the idea of a living constitution, which says that the judiciary has the power to modify the meaning of constitutional provisions to adapt, as expressed in Trop v. Dulles, to "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." For Scalia, this idea misunderstands and negates what he calls the "anti-evolutionary purpose" of a constitution. A society that adopts a constitution, he says, "is skeptical...that societies always 'mature,' as opposed to rot."[13] Scalia notes further that many important social advances, such as women's suffrage, were achieved not by judicial fiat but constitutional amendments—whose adoption, Scalia adds, is slow and cumbersome by design. The idea is that amending of the Constitution allows for democratic change as opposed to top-down rule by judges. He also compares his interpretation of the Constitution to general interpretation of other laws or statutes, which are not thought to change over time.[8] When questioned by Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan about his support of a "dead Constitution," Scalia replied: "I can package it better than that. I call it the enduring Constitution."[8] Justice Scalia keynoted a debate at the prestigious Yale Political Union on this topic, speaking in the affirmative on the resolution "Resolved: The U.S. Constitution is Not a Living Document that Reflects the Evolving Standards of American Society." The motion passed by a vote of 50-36-6.[14]
Scalia often relies upon tradition and history to discern the original meaning of unclear constitutional provisions,[15] but when interpreting statutory language, he considers legislative history to be an irrelevant and unreliable interpretive tool: the New York Times wrote Scalia "believes that legislative history is basically fraudulent and that judges should never consider it."[16] This aversion for legislative history is a central tenet of textualism and is infused with both an appreciation for public choice theory[17] and of the realities of legislative compromise (i.e., the statutory text being the only reliable evidence of the deal that was struck).[18] This position often puts him at odds with Justice Breyer, who is perhaps the Court's most steadfast proponent of attempting to discern the overarching legislative objectives of statutes and who values legislative history in that pursuit.
Consistent with his formalist sensibilities, Scalia seeks to maximize the role of the legislature in shaping law and to minimize judicial discretion in its interpretation. For this reason he favors bright-line rules over abstract balancing tests[19] (one of his most frequently-cited works off the bench is an essay titled "The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules,"[20] which also neatly encapsulates Scalia's formalist view of law), and frowns upon judicially-crafted compromises between the requirements of the Constitution and perceived expediency (see, e.g., his dissent in Maryland v. Craig); he has frequently pointed out that, regardless of whether or not moderate views are a good idea in politics, they are at root incompatible with the job of a judge: "[w]hat is a 'moderate interpretation' [of the Constitution])? Halfway between what it says and what you want it to say?"[21]
Scalia's originalism frequently puts him on the conservative side of the Court in constitutional cases, and he is generally perceived as a conservative member of the court. He has received the lowest Segal-Cover score of the current justices, and the lowest of all Supreme Court nominees measured; whereby the lower the score the more conservative a justice is presumed to be, and the higher the score the more liberal a justice is presumed to be.[22] In a 2003 statistical analysis of Supreme Court voting patterns, Scalia and Justice Thomas emerged as the most conservative.[23][24] However, his originalism occasionally brings results that defy conservative administrations. Judged by results alone, like his colleague Justice Clarence Thomas, Scalia has handed down or concurred in decisions that might be called liberal (for example, the Apprendi line of cases, Kyllo v. United States, Smith v. United States or Texas v. Johnson).
[edit]Hamiltonian political principles

QUOTE

A society that adopts a constitution, he says, "is skeptical...that societies always 'mature,' as opposed to rot."[13] Scalia notes further that many important social advances, such as women's suffrage, were achieved not by judicial fiat but constitutional amendments—whose adoption, Scalia adds, is slow and cumbersome by design. The idea is that amending of the Constitution allows for democratic change as opposed to top-down rule by judges.

Love that quote. Neither side should be making law from the bench.

Just don't tell me he's a Constitutionalist or even has a shred of ethics because he is lock, stock and barrel for the Republican party, no matter what.

Bullsheit. He is the Republican party first fork everyone else, period. His bias was proven so many times it's ridiculous to deny it.

Right. Republicans love judicial activists, as long as long as THEY get to do it.

Not to the extent democrats do.

No need to get all het up.

You get one of your own now.

Right. You can spread that bs far and wide and get a hell of a crop o' corn.

Not one of my own. They won't ever do that. However, she would be a counter to the rightwing forkheads Bush appointed.

I won't be truly happy until we have a gay Samoan hunchback on the court.

Talk about luck! Have you seen Obama's next pick?

Lucianne.com

Latina woman

department of redundancy department

Vacuous Inyeriod...