Legal Experts Look Back At Conservative Court Term

By Learned Foote - Talk Radio News Service

The American Constitution Society, a liberal group designed to counter what they describe as an “activist conservative legal movement,” hosted a panel of legal experts today to review the actions of the Supreme Court this term. According to many observers, the court has leaned to the right under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts.

The panel consisted of former New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse, and six lawyers who have argued before the Supreme Court. The panelists discussed a broad range of cases and offered perspectives on the court that were often at variance.

John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, criticized the oral arguments in two cases regarding civil rights, the Voting Rights Act and Ricci v. DeStefano. “There was a level of hostility directed at the government lawyers in those cases to me was unprecedented,” he said. He argued that the decisions reflected the court’s erroneous belief that legal protection against racial discrimination is no longer required in some cases.

Greenhouse, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Supreme Court, harshly criticized the court’s decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, in which plaintiff alleged that unjust discrimination led to his detention after 9/11. Greenhouse said the ruling revealed a “certain level of intellectual dishonesty of this court, a certain cynicism,” because it misrepresented previous legal precedents.

Greenhouse noted that some court observers believe Iqbal will likely be the most cited case of the term. "It’s going to be cited by defendants in every civil case," she said.

Andrew J. Pincus, partner at Mayer Brown LLP, discussed the five environmental cases to come before the Supreme Court this term, all of which resulted in a defeat for environmentalists. He said that one critical factor governing these decisions was judicial deference to the executive branch of the government. He noted that “we have a different administration now, and deference to the executive branch may well cut the other way.”

Some lawyers also suggested that broad generalizations of the Roberts Court were inaccurate. “Calling the Roberts Court a great court for business defendants or at least employers has been a little over-simplistic for awhile,” said Paul D. Clement, former Solicitor General and a current partner at King & Spalding LLP. He emphasized that the context of each individual case matters greatly, and that it is difficult to pinpoint broad trends across the term.

Several members of the panel lamented the retirement of liberal justice David Souter, and suggested that nominee Sonia Sotomayor will make a notable and perhaps unpredictable difference in the ideological make-up of the court next year.

Newly Appointed “Special Representative to Muslim Communities” Discusses Outreach Plans

By Learned Foote- Talk Radio News Service

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently appointed Farah Pandith as Special Representative to Muslim Communities, a new position within the State Department. Pandith held a news briefing to discuss her role on Wednesday.

Born in India, Pandith grew up in Massachusetts, where she attended Milton Academy, Smith College, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

She has previously held several positions at various government departments, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Security Council, and—most recently—the European bureau of the State Department.

Pandith said that her new role will require her to “leverage my experience in Europe and in other parts of the world to think about how we can have the department work on Muslim engagement in a way that is out of the box, that is innovative, that is dynamic, that works with embassies so that we’re getting to know the next generation of thinkers.”

She declined to answer questions about controversial issues affecting Muslim communities, and said that her role is not to create policy. “What we want to do is build dialogue,” she explained.

She emphasized the nuance and diversity of Islam in the United States and the world, and said that no single engagement tactic would suit every community. “It isn’t just one thing from Washington that’s going to be shoved into everybody’s faces,” she said.

Pandith said she planned to visit multiple areas of the globe over the next few years, and would not deal only with regions where conflicts exist. However, she explained that since she just started her job, she has to “consult with my colleagues at the department to figure out the first few steps.”

Swine Flu Still Going Strong

By Learned Foote- Talk Radio News Service

The H1N1 virus, widely known as swine flu, is responsible for 127 deaths and more than 27,000 documented cases of infection in the U.S., explained medical experts Tuesday.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, discussed the implications of the virus’ spread. He clarified the difference between seasonal and pandemic influenza, while noting that the two categories of disease could potentially overlap.

According to Fauci, seasonal flu is “exquisitely predictable,” and the population has immunity to similar strains of the disease. The seasonal flu causes approximately 36,000 deaths per year in the U.S.

The pandemic flu is comparatively unpredictable. Fauci said that this sort of virus is “new enough that the...vast majority of the population has had not only no exposure to the virus, but they haven’t had exposure to anything that’s even related to that virus.” Because the population has no “residual immunity” to this new virus, the disease is more likely to harm young people, who normally are not deeply affected by the seasonal flu.

The World Health Organization declared a flu pandemic for the first time in 41 years on June 11th.

Fauci said that many measures to protect the public’s health have been taken over the past several months, beginning with low-tech measures such as closing schools. The CDC has isolated the virus, and five companies are currently working to create a vaccine to potentially be administered to the population dependent on a more deadly or wide-spread H1N1 strain.

He said that the recent strain of H1N1 is not as dangerous as other related viruses.

“It’s not killing a high percentage of people, and the same thing holds true for transmissibility,” said Fauci.

Fauci also noted that the virus has been “remarkably constant” and not susceptible to mutations that could render a vaccine ineffective. “Can it change to the point of veering away from the vaccine we’re making? Yes. Is it doing it? No.”

Dr. Harvey V. Fineburg, President of the Institute of Medicine, warned that health care officials should not underestimate the potential threat, even though a campaign to immunize millions of Americans overestimated the impact of the virus in the 1970s.

“In 1976, the focus of policy-makers and public health authorities were almost entirely driven by the worst case. Today we have to be careful not to make the complementary error of having all of our attention only on the most likely case,” Fineburg explained.

The mortality rate for documented H1N1 cases in the U.S. is 0.46 percent.

Legal Experts Say Supreme Court Decision Should Not Affect Sotomayor Hearing

By Learned Foote- Talk Radio News Service

A panel of legal experts argued on Monday that the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court in Ricci v. DeStefano should not affect the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The Center for American Progress and the American Constitution Society hosted the panel.

The Supreme Court found that the city of New Haven did not have sufficient grounds to throw out the results of a test designed to specify officers for promotion, even though black and Hispanic firefighters fared relatively poorly on the test. The opinion struck down a ruling issued by the district court and upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, upon which Sotomayor serves. Four justices, including Stevens, Breyer, and Souter, signed a dissent written by Justice Ginsburg.

Tom Goldstein of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, founder of the popular SCOTUSblog, acknowledged that the majority opinion interpreted the law differently than Sonia Sotomayor had. He quoted Justice Kennedy, however, who had said that the law under consideration was unclear. Goldstein also noted that Ginsburg’s dissent said that Sotomayor followed precedent set by the 2nd Circuit.

Goldstein said that the majority opinion indicated an unwillingness to engage with the political process surrounding Sotomayor’s confirmation. He said the opinion “seemed to go out of its way to avoid openly criticizing the second circuit panel on which Judge Sotomayor sat, rather than sort of taking the Court of Appeals openly to task.”

Kevin Russell of Howe & Russell pointed out that Justice Souter—whom Sotomayor could potentially replace on the Supreme Court—signed onto the dissent. He said that the four dissenting justices “thought that Judge Sotomayor’s opinion was correct in concluding that this is not the kind of decision that requires a special justification, it’s not the equivalent of intentional racial discrimination, and that New Haven had substantial leeway to throw the results of these tests out based on the evidence that it had before it.”

New Republican Senate Leaders Appointed

By Learned Foote- Talk Radio News Service

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate Republican Leader, introduced two new GOP leaders on Thursday. Both were elected without opposition. 

Senator John Thune (R-N.D.), replaced Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) after Ensign resigned from his post as chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Thune had previously served as the vice-chairman of the policy committee. 

Thune said that he and his committee will craft policy to counteract the Democrats in Congress, who he said are “proposing the largest tax-increase in American history, spending at unprecedented levels, exploding the debt, putting on a new energy tax, nationalizing one-sixth of the economy with the health care system, taking ownership interest in now over 500 companies, [and] calling for more unionization.” 

Thune also hopes to present a “forward-looking, positive agenda for America’s future.”  

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) stepped into Thune's vacated position to become Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, where she had already served at the leadership table. Murkowski emphasized the need to communicate the GOP message to the American people. 

Referencing the recent scandals surrounding the Republican Party, including the extra-marital affair that led Ensign to resign as chairman of the policy committee, McConnell said that he and the Senate Republicans will “do the people’s business; we don’t intend to be distracted by any other issues that may be out there.”