Litigation

MT Ban on Corporate Political Spending ?Unconstitutional?

Posted on October 19, 2010
Montana’s ban on corporations making independent political expenditures violates the Constitution, a state judge has ruled. Judge Jeffrey Sherlock ruled that the century-old law, “insofar as it prevents corporations from making independent expenditures to support or oppose political candidates or political parties, is declared unconstitutional,” according to an Associated Press article...

Election 2010: A ?Wad of Cash? in Illinois

Posted on October 18, 2010
There are new reports of big campaign money flowing into an increasingly contentious retention election faced by a state Supreme Court justice in Illinois. Democratic Justice Thomas L. Kilbride (second from left in photo) is caught up in a “mud-filled battle” over re-election, columnist Greg Hinz writes in a Chicago Business commentary...

Campaign Finance: ?Watergate II? Scandal Ahead?

Posted on October 18, 2010
Campaign finance has exploded into one of the biggest news stories of the year, especially on the heels of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Now some are predicting that with the flood of political cash, a Watergate-style scandal could erupt...

High Court to Decide Whether Ashcroft Can be Sued

Posted on October 18, 2010
The Supreme Court agreed today to consider whether former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft can be sued for allegedly misusing federal law to detain a terrorism suspect, who never was charged with a crime, on false pretenses. Letting the lawsuit by Abdullah Al-Kidd, a U...

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Appeals Panel Upholds WA Disclosure Laws

Posted on October 15, 2010
In a ruling that reverberated across the country, a federal appeals court has upheld Washington state’s campaign finance disclosure laws. A panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Washington statute does not trample the First Amendment rights of Human Life of Washington, a group that did not want to disclose its [...

JAS Issues Guide for Retention Election Voters

Posted on October 15, 2010
With an unusual number of states facing contested retention elections, Justice at Stake has issued a new background paper encouraging voters to look at a judges’ entire record, while relying on multiple sources of information, and not to focus excessively on one decision...

Election 2010: IA Radio Ad Urges Keeping Justices

Posted on October 15, 2010
A newly formed group that includes a former Republican governor has launched radio advertising to support reelection of three Iowa Supreme Court justices in retention elections this fall. At the same time, one of those judges who has been targeted in an ouster effort, Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, used some of her strongest language yet [...

O?Connor: ?Keep Campaign Cash out of Courtrooms?

Posted on October 15, 2010
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O?Connor took her campaign in support of merit-based selection of state judges to national television audience. ?[W]hat you get these days is large campaign contributions when you have elections,? Justice O?Connor said in a PBS NewsHour interview...

JAS Testifies on Recusal in WI

Posted on October 14, 2010
Wisconsin’s recusal rules lag behind those in almost every state and should be toughened to comply with the landmark 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Caperton v. Massey, Justice at Stake’s state affairs director told a legislative hearing in Madison today...

JAS Criticizes Call for Judicial Ousters

Posted on October 13, 2010
Justice at Stake has criticized an Iowa congressman for urging the ousters of “lawless judges” following this week’s order striking down the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gay military personnel (See Gavel Grab)...

U.S. Judge Enjoins ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell?

Posted on October 12, 2010
A federal judge in California enjoined worldwide Tuesday the enforcement of the U.S. military’s ban on openly gay service members, called “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Judge Virginia Phillips had struck down the policy last month as unconstitutional (see Gavel Grab), but that did not put an immediate halt to the policy; she gave both sides [...

Analyzing ?Citizens United? and Campaign Cash

Posted on October 12, 2010
Not only are tides of cash flowing into election campaigns this year, but torrents of analysis are following. Two major newspapers, for example, have offered updated views about the impact of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, issued in January, on the flood of cash streaming into this year’s elections...

Judicial Elections: ?Lunacy on the March?

Posted on October 12, 2010
How do our judicial elections appear through the lens of a British publication? “Lunacy on the march” is the headline for a commentary in the Democracy in America blog of the  Economist magazine. Here are a few observations from the blog post by Charlotte Howard, an Economist correspondent, who quotes the Justice at Stake Campaign [...

Debate Over Terror Trials Rages On

Posted on October 12, 2010
When a federal judge ruled that a star witness could not be called in a terror trial case due to coercion of the defendant, who had identified the witness, it stoked the debate over trying terror suspects in civilian courts verus before military tribunals...

Reprimand for TX Judge is Dismissed

Posted on October 12, 2010
A special three-judge panel has dismissed a reprimand of Judge Sharon Keller, Texas’ top criminal court judge, over her handling of a last-minute death row appeal. The panel ruled that the reprimand, called a public warning, was not an option that was legally available to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which issued it, according [...

Editorial: ?Duty to Disclose, Mrs. Thomas?

Posted on October 12, 2010
Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has a duty to disclose the large, secret donors to a conservative nonprofit organization she leads, a New York Times editorial contends. The editorial follows a Times article a day earlier discussing gifts of $500,000 and $50,000 from undisclosed donors to the group, Liberty Central, [...

Media Keeps Monitoring Virginia Thomas

Posted on October 11, 2010
Potential judicial issues raised by the activism of Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, head of a lobbying group called Liberty Central and the spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, get another look in a lengthy New York Times article. The article’s timing appears keyed to Ginni Thomas’ appearance at a large Tea Party conference in Richmond, [...

Election 2010: ?Half-Truths Fly? in NV Ads

Posted on October 11, 2010
“Half-truths are the name of the game for the next month” as judicial election TV advertising ramps up in Nevada and attacks fly, warns Jane Ann Morrison in a column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In one example Morrison cites the case of a Justice Court candidate, Kristine Kuzemka, whose ads accuse rival William “Bill” [...

IA Pastor Pledges to Defy U.S. Law

Posted on October 11, 2010
The Rev. Cary K. Gordon of Iowa (photo at right) is pledging to openly defy federal law when he urges his congregation to vote to remove three state Supreme Court justices in November retention elections. “Dear God,” a Des Moines Register article quotes Gordon as saying in prayer, “please allow the IRS to attack my [...

Judicial Vacancies Called a ?Fixable Crisis?

Posted on October 11, 2010
Delays in confirming President Obama’s nominees for the federal courts have caused a true crisis in Colorado, according to the executive director of a Denver-based partner group of the Justice at Stake Campaign. “We have one fixable crisis in Colorado,” Rebecca Love Kourlis of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System wrote [...

Another Pastor in IA Ouster Effort

Posted on October 08, 2010
Another pastor has joined the effort to take aim at three state Supreme Court justices on the retention ballot in Iowa this fall. Religious leaders ought to tell their followers about “out of control” judges, he says. According to an Iowa Independent article, pastor Jeff Mullen of Point of Grace Church in Waukee has launched [...

?On Recusal, Justices Should not be Sole Judge?

Posted on October 08, 2010
Justice Elena Kagan’s donning the robes of a Supreme Court justice this week, and her decision to sit out 25 of the 51 cases accepted by the court so far, has prompted some thinking in lofty places about supreme recusal. A New York Times editorial, headlined “Recusals and the Court,” applauds Justice Kagan for “making [...

Election 2010: More States See Costly Court Races

Posted on October 08, 2010
More states are joining the trend of costly judicial elections, with a state Supreme Court justice in Illinois currently leading the way in TV ad spending, according to data compiled by a reform group. Democratic Justice Thomas L. Kilbride faces a potentially costly challenge from groups seeking to remove him in an Illinois retention election, [...

High Court Weights Limits on Military Funeral Protests

Posted on October 07, 2010
In one of the most emotional cases likely to come before the Supreme Court this term, the justices were asked to balance free speech rights and a family’s seeking privacy to bury a son who was killed in Iraq. At the center of the dispute was the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, which has [...

IA Ouster Advocates Turn to Robo-Calls

Posted on October 07, 2010
A group that has aired TV advertising to press for the ouster of three Iowa Supreme Court justices (see Gavel Grab) now is also using automated telephone calls to reach voters. It was another sign of the unusually intense activity surrounding retention (up-or-down) elections in several states that Iowa for Freedom is using the automated [...

Editorial: Terror Trial in Federal Court Served Justice

Posted on October 06, 2010
The life sentence given Faisal Shahzad in New York City this week represented a success for prosecuting accused terrorists in civilian courts as opposed to military tribunals, according to a New York Times editorial. Shahzad was sentenced in federal court for trying to explode a car bomb at Times Square (see Gavel Grab)...

Anti-Disclosure ?Litigation Offensive? Loses One in ME

Posted on October 06, 2010
Portions of Maine’s campaign financing laws that deal with public financing of campaigns, disclosure requirements and campaign contribution limits have been upheld by a federal appeals court. The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Tuesday a challenge to these provisions, according to an Associated Press article...

Editorial: Changes ?Protect Fair Courts in Missouri?

Posted on October 06, 2010
Missouri recently adopted changes to make its merit selection method of choosing judges more transparent, and a Kansas City Star editorial has praised the revisions as protecting fair and impartial courts: “The process spares Missouri from the prospect that its judges will be influenced by large campaign contributions...

Kagan?s Debut Wins Good Reviews

Posted on October 05, 2010
For a newcomer to the Supreme Court who never served as a judge, Justice Elena Kagan played to some favorable reviews early this week. (Thanks for the links to SCOTUSblog.) Jan Crawford in CBS News’ Crossroads portrayed Justice Kagan’s opening performance as that of a seasoned “pro,” and she was able to pull in other [...

NYC Bombing Attempt Nets Life Sentence

Posted on October 05, 2010
Faisal Shahzad, who had pleaded guilty to multiple charges in the attempted car bombing of New York City’s Times Square, was sentenced by a federal judge today to life in prison. “The defeat of the U.S. is imminent, inshallah,” Shahzad said during his sentencing by U...

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