Supreme Court Journalists Hold Mixed Opinions On Sotomayor

By Aaron Richardson-Talk Radio News Service

Following the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, opinion on what kind of justice Sotomayor will be continues to seem mixed.

NPR Senior Correspondent Juan Williams believes that Sotomayor will pursue a squarely moderate course.

“Judge, and potentially Justice, Sotomayor will try to adhere to as much as she can to stay within the mainstream and hold to this notion that she does believe in precedent,” Williams said Friday during a panel discussion with a number of journalists who specialize in Supreme Court proceedings.

However, Washington Times columnist Quin Hillyer fears that Sotomayor will buck the responsibilities of the bench and adopt an activist role.

“I think her record shouts out advocate and does not even whisper judge. I fear that her speeches really indicate a crusading mentality,” Hillyer said.

According to veteran Supreme Court journalist Lyle Denniston, Sotomayor may have a hard time replacing departing Associate Justice David Souter.

“I do not think she is as smart as Justice Souter was and to my mind I have covered a lot of smart people on the court but no one since [Former Associate Justice appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt] Felix Frankfurter has the intelligence that David Souter had,” Denniston said.

Obama Names Sotomayor As Supreme Court Justice

By Annie Berman, Talk Radio News Service

Today at the White House, President Obama announced federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor as the widely-anticipated replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. If confirmed, Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic woman to serve on the bench, and the third woman in history.

A native of New York, Sotomayor, 54, was born to Puerto Rican parents. After her father died she was raised in a single family household.

Sotomayor attended Princeton University where she graduated summa cum laude in 1976. Later, she attended Yale Law School where she was the editor of The Yale Law Journal.

After graduation from law school in 1979, Sotomayor served as an Assistant District Attorney to New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. In 1997, Sotomayer was nominated by President Bill Clinton to her current position.

Sotomayer’s most famous case was the 1994 baseball strike. Sotomayer issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball which prevented the MLB from implementing a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and using replacement players. Her ruling in this case ended the strike one day before the 1995 season.

Obama had only praise for Sotomayor. “Judge Sotomayor has worked at almost every level of our judicial system, providing her with a depth of experience and a breadth of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court justice,” he said. Obama added that he hopes Sotomayor may begin her tenure with the court when it begins its term in October.  

After Obama spoke, Sotomayor thanked her mother and brother for their support, and the President for the nomination. “I chose to be a lawyer and ultimately a judge because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law.”  

Sotomayor now faces a daunting confirmation process with the U.S. Senate. 

Top Court: Ashcroft, Mueller Not Liable For Muslim Civil Rights Violations

By Jonathan Bronstein, Talk Radio News Service

Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government allowed law enforcement officials to arrest people of “high interest” according to race, religion, or national origin, according to Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani citizen who was placed in a maximum-security prison in early 2002.

Iqbal claimed that the government’s decision violated his civil rights and he sued former U.S. Attorney General John Aschcroft and Robert Mueller, then-Director of the FBI.

Today, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Kennedy, ruled against Iqbal.

Kennedy wrote that Iqbal’s initial filings did not provide enough information to automatically find Ashcroft and Mueller responsible for the abuses he suffered while being held.

The case will now return to the lower courts, where Iqbal may have a chance to substantiate his claim that he was subjected to harsh conditions on account of his religion and nationality, and that Ashcroft and Mueller were the “principle architects” of this plan.

Four Justices dissented, and in an opinion written by Justice Souter agreed with the lower courts' findings that Ashcroft and Mueller did violate his civil rights and could therefore be held responsible.

SCOTUS: Pregnancy Payment Not Retroactive

By Jonathan Bronstein, Talk Radio News Service

Global telecommunication corporation AT&T’s pension policy before 1978 was a seniority system, which was achieved through years of service, but women were precluded from gaining as much seniority as their male counterparts because of the time they took on pregnancy leave.

In 1978 Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, and AT&T complied with this new ruling, and adjusted their pension policy accordingly.

After this law came into effect, the question arose as to whether women who already retired would benefit from this new calculation.

Today, in a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court decided the Title VII, which prevents pregnancy discrimination, does not require AT&T to recalculate the pensions, so AT&T was within its rights to not retroactively pay employees for their loss of pay.

Justice David Souter wrote the majority opinion, and in regard to Title VII, “There is no such clear intent here, indeed, no indication at all that Congress had retroactive application in mind, the evidence points the other way.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Paul Stevens dissented. Ginsberg wrote that “AT&T committed a current violation of Title VII when it did not totally discontinue reliance upon a pension calculation premised on the notion that pregnancy-based classification display no gender bias.”

Supreme Court skeptical of "light" cigarette suit

Basic facts:

It's long been known that people smoking "light" cigarettes smoke them differently. They inhale more, smoke more cigarettes and/or cover the air holes in the filter. The FTC requires that cigarette companies use the "Cambridge Filter Method" for testing tar and nicotine levels, and that method shows lower levels. But it doesn't accurately recreate the way people actually smoke, and people really end up getting about the same amounts of tar and nicotine whether they smoke light cigarettes or not.

Color:

Not really relevant to the legal arguments, but the U.S. government took a position in the case and received 10 minutes of time, argued by Assistant Solicitor General Douglas Hallward-Driemeier. Justice Alito grilled him about whether the FTC had tacitly approved the use of these figures. "If these figures are misleading, you should have prohibited them a long time ago." He said that the FTC had created the problem at the base of this case, saying that, "If they are misleading, then you have mislead." Justice Scalia seemed to concur, noting that he had heard a case on a similar issue ("lip draping," the covering of the filter air holes with one's lips) when he was on the circuit court between 1982 and 1986. "It's been general knowledge for a long time, and the FTC has done nothing," he said.

Arguments:

The questions in the case dealt with whether the deceptive advertising claims, brought in state courts, should be allowed under federal law. There is a federal law regulating labeling on cigarettes, and the question is whether federal law controls (meaning any action would have to come from the FTC) or whether cases like this should be allowed. There was a lot of discussion about whether the case relies on "smoking and health" or whether it's a purely deceptive advertising case. Altria and the Justices noted that if there were no health distinction, there would be no case, but the respondents argued that this was just a run-of-the-mill deceptive advertising case and presented no special burden on cigarette companies. They argued that the federal law was passed to keep states from having extra regulations focused on cigarette companies, but that it wasn't supposed to prevent general state laws, which apply to everyone else, from being enforced.

There was also a big question as to the relief being sought. Respondents said at first that they were not asking for an injunction to force additional warnings or stop selling the cigarettes, but Mr. Frederick later admitted he had misspoken. Still, he argued the main thing they were asking for were damages. He could not, however, explain what damages he was asking for. He said there was an economic cost when people bought the light cigarettes instead of normal ones, but under questioning by Justices Scalia and Souter admitted the cigarettes cost the same whether light or not. Further, he tried to argue that there would be damages even if the smokers could show no health effects—if they were Olympic athletes, for example. The Court may decide that this lack of demonstrated harm means that the plaintiffs are owed no money, and therefore there is no case.