PUBLIC MARKS from jasontromm with tags supreme & justice

In a largely symbolic gesture, voters in Supreme Court Justice David Souter's hometown weighed in Tuesday on a proposal to seize his 200-year-old farmhouse as payback for a ruling that expanded government's authority to take property.

Do people have a right to medical treatment whether or not they can pay? What about a right to food or decent housing? Would a U.S. Supreme Court justice hold that these are rights just like those enumerated in our Bill of Rights? In order to have any hope of coherently answering these questions, we have to decide what is a right.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a lower court was wrong to strike down New Hampshire's parental notification law. In a unanimous decision written by retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the justices let the abortion restriction stand.

He was going to be subjected to a filibuster. Now it appears that Supreme Court Justice Nominee Samuel J. Alito, Jr. will get an up-or-down vote.

You heard it here first: Ted Kennedy, the Democrat Party mascot, is a tone-deaf alien from a distant galaxy. How else to explain his impudent inquisition into the integrity of our nation's next Supreme Court justice, the Honorable Samuel Alito? In Senate Judiciary Committee hearings this week, Kennedy actually asserted that the nominee's association with a conservative Princeton alumni group two decades ago should disqualify him from a seat on the High Court.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the landmark case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) that “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.” His words were a ringing affirmation of the freedoms of conscience and expression that are central to American liberty.

Most debate about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito has focused on his propensity to vote to overrule Roe v. Wade and the similarity between him and conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. But despite the superficial parallels between the two conservative, Italian-American Catholic jurists, it is important to recognize that Alito has a substantial libertarian dimension to his jurisprudence as well as a conservative one. In several key fields of law, he is more likely than Scalia and other conservatives to be skeptical of assertions of government power. More important, there is much in his record that should appeal to libertarians and -- to a lesser extent -- even left-wing liberals.

US Senators (both Democrats and Replucians) have no business keeping secrets from the American people.

In addition to his ambiguous record as a lawyer and judge, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has the benefit of opponents who seem determined to discredit themselves and guarantee his confirmation. This self-destructive impulse is epitomized by NARAL Pro-Choice America's despicable TV ad linking Roberts to "violent fringe groups."

Is NARAL's attack on John Roberts about abortion rights or abortion profits?

Lessons from a Supreme Court nominee's defeat.