Litigation

Thursday Gavel Grab Briefs

By Peter Hardin

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has agreed to give freshmen lawmakers a lesson about the Constitution, after Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., invited him to do so, according to ABC News’ The Note.

• A prosecutor said in a pretrial proceeding that Pennsylvania State Sen. Jane Orie benefited from $70,000 to $130,000 in political work carried out by her publicly paid legislative staff for herself and Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin, her sister, according to a Pittsburgh Post Gazette article. The justice has not been charged.

• Paula Holmes-Greeley praised in a signed Muskegon Chronicle editorial the establishment of a task force to review Michigan’s selection of appellate judges. She wrote, “The increasingly negative tone and outside funding of judicial campaigns in Michigan is threatening the independence of the court system.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 16, 2010 (boomark / email).