A new look at Clarence Thomas’s 20 years on the Supreme Court, from a critic, is surprisingly positive.

A few liberal law professors say Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should resign now so President Obama can pick her successor.

At what point does the legitimate right to demonstrate cross the line into infringing on the rights of others?

The Supreme Court rules that “offensiveness” does not trump the First Amendment. And they’re right.

Elena Kagan has announced that she will not participated in the consideration of more than half the cases currently scheduled to be hear by the Supreme Court when it’s new term begins in October.

Not surprisingly, American’s partisan views on the Supreme Court are pretty much wrong.

Not surprisingly, Elena Kagan finished her testimony without giving any real ammunition to the Republicans.

If you needed any more signs that the Supreme Court confirmation process had become silly and vapid, it came today when Senator Amy Klobucher asked Elena Kagan who her favor character was in the Twilight series: H/T: TPM

George Will has some real questions for Elena Kagan. Too bad nobody’s going to ask them.

Elena Kagan’s interest in vigorous and open confirmation hearings ended roughly the moment she was sworn in by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Miss yesterday’s opening round of the Kagan hearings ? You didn’t miss much.

When it comes to the Supreme Court, most Americans have no idea what they’re talking about.

A new Gallup poll shows that public support for Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court is lower than it has been for most recent Supreme Court nominees: PRINCETON, NJ — A USA Today/Gallup poll finds just under half of Americans, 46%, in favor of the Senate’s confirming Elena Kagan’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme [...]

The Supreme Court ruled today that mere silence in response to police questioning is not sufficient to constitute an invocation of a suspect’s Miranda rights: WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting [...]

Antonin Scalia is not bothered in the least by the fact that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has never served as a judge, and in fact seems to believe it might actually be a good thing: Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s lack of judicial experience got a high-profile defense Wednesday night from a prospective colleague: [...]

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court to begin June 28th: Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announced this morning that he has scheduled the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court nominee, to begin on June [...]

The Supreme Court handed down two rulings today which, from almost any other institution, one would be forced to conclude were intended as some sort of philosophical meta-joke. First, in Graham v. Florida, Kennedy rules for a 6-3 Court that, unless there’s a murder involved, it violates the Eighth Amendment to sentence a juvenile to [...]

The Atlantic‘s Chris Good points out that, while some are grumbling over Elena Kagan’s lack of a paper trail, the far more common problem in the digital age is that most public intellectuals have so much information out there that it’s virtually impossible to corral it all. The last major judicial nominee reported out by [...]

One of the most conservative members of the Senate said today that a filibuster of Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court is not going to happen: Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is unlikely to face a Republican filibuster, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican said Sunday. “The filibuster should be relegated to extreme circumstances, and I [...]

The main attack that appears to exist against Elena Kagan at the moment has to do with her actions as Dean of the Harvard Law School and policies concerning military recruiters. The basic position is well represented by Newt Gingrich’s statement today Fox News Sunday (as transcribed by HuffPo): “I think the president should withdraw [...]

Earlier in the week, we were treated to a discussion about Elena Kagan’s 1981 senior thesis at Princeton, “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933.”  In a Newsweek Web Exclusive, we learned that, despite some sympathy for the broad goals of the movement, Kagan isn’t a socialist and is both philosophically and [...]

The Senate Judiciary Committee has released its questionnaire for Elena Kagan: The Senate Judiciary Committee has released the questionnaire it has prepared for the Supreme Court nomination hearing of Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Among the materials requested, the Committee asks for any community-wide communications Kagan sent at Harvard, including those related to Harvard’s anti-discrimination policy, [...]

One of the many smaller issues that have come up in the days since President Obama named Elena Kagan to replace Justice John Paul Stevens is the revelation that Kagan is apparently open to the idea of allowing oral argument in the nation’s highest court to be televised: In addition to meeting with Brown and [...]

In his most recent column, David Brooks laments the rise of Organization Kids, of whom he suggests Elena Kagan is an archetype: Kagan has many friends along the Acela corridor, thanks to her time at Hunter College High School, Princeton, Harvard and in Democratic administrations. So far, I haven’t met anybody who is not an [...]

Earlier this morning I noted that since 1976 there have been three failed SCOTUS nominees:  Robert Bork, Douglas Ginsburg and Harriet Miers. Commenter Charles Austin asked “They all seem to have only one relevant thing in common besides being nominated for Justice of the Supreme Court. Can you identify it?” And yes, it is true [...]

A few weeks back, in a post titled “Elena Kagan Lesbian Rumor Smear Neither Smear Nor Rumor,” I weighed in on the kerfuffle surrounding Ben Domenech’s “outing” of the then-prospective Supreme Court nominee as gay.   The essence of the piece is that, according to several credible accounts, Kagan was widely known in both Cambridge and [...]

One of the reasons that I tend to take a fairly dispassionate view of SCOTUS nominations and to focus primarily on the qualifications question is simply because the probabilities are that once a president makes a selection that the candidate will be confirmed. Within my politically active life (i.e., the time in which I have [...]

RedState‘s Erick Erickson notes that, not only would Elena Kagan replace the Supreme Court’s last Protestant but also “the last of the military veterans on the United States Supreme Court.” Indeed, according to his Wikipedia entry, John Paul Stevens “began work on his master’s degree in English at the university in 1941, but soon decided [...]

FindLaw notes that 40 of the 111 Justices that have served on the Supreme Court of the United States lacked judicial experience prior to ascending to the bench.  That equates to 36.03% of all Justices. This is a a take it for what it is worth kind of factoid, but is interesting nonetheless. Two observations: [...]

Scott Lemieux notes something that I also noticed in the reporting on the Kagan nomination:  the idea that part of the reason that Obama nominated her was that she might be able to influence Justice Anthony Kennedy. Scott notes, for example, TNR’s Jeffrey Rosen:  “Obama has signaled that he wants a justice who can win [...]

As Doug Mataconis predicted yesterday, the opening gambit of conservatives seeking a reason to deny Elena Kagan confirmation to the Supreme Court is to charge that she’s hostile to the military, as demonstrated by her decision as dean of Harvard Law School to deny military recruiters the right to officially visit the campus because the [...]

People are having fun with reports that Elena Kagan, who argued as an advisor during the Ruth Bader Ginsburg confirmation that Supreme Court nominees should be required to give very detailed answers to policy questions, has changed her position now that the shoe is on the other foot. Kagan wrote in 1995 that the confirmation [...]

It seems that George Mason lawprof David Bernstein has spotted a trend: The president went to Harvard, and barely defeated a primary opponent who went to Yale. His predecessor went to Yale and Harvard, and defeated opponents who went to Harvard. The previous two presidents also went to Yale, with Bush I defeating another Harvard grad [...]

Responding to the fact that, by nominating Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Barack Obama has now gone two-for-two in appointing women to the High Court — and, assuming she’s confirmed, would triple the number of female Justices in a matter of months — NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez tweets, “Just wondering: are men allowed to [...]

As David Weigel notes, the directions from which activists and pundits on the will attack the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court are already fairly clear. I. The Harvard Military Recruiters Controversy Already this morning, one conservative blogger has called Kagan an “anti-military loon” for her role in banning military recruiters from Harvard [...]

Continuing a theme of late here at OTB (see here and here), the Kagan discussion reminds me of another reform to the US constitution that I would love to see:  changing the term of office of Justices of the Supreme Court.  Specifically I would eliminate lifetime tenure and instead institute a single term that would [...]

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, considered the frontrunner to replace Justice John Paul Stevens since his retirement announcement, will be President Obama’s choice, it is being widely reported. On paper, she would appear to be a slam dunk.   She was confirmed by the Senate to her present position just last year by a 61 to 31 [...]

The Nation‘s Marc Cooper is generating some minor buzz with his suggestion that President Obama appoint an atheist to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. This is a no-brainer. The religious views of the next justice of the high court must absolutely be a decisive factor. Though the court without Stevens will be [...]

Two prominent Republican Congressmen have come out against reading Miranda rights to American citizens suspected of terrorism. Congressional Republicans want to know whether the Pakistani-born American arrested in the Times Square car bombing plot was read his Miranda rights, with Sen. John McCain saying it would be a “serious mistake” if the suspect was reminded [...]

For whatever reason, my home state of Virginia leads the nation in vanity plates.    Heck, I’ve got one that says “OTB.”   But, apparently, the DMV frowns on tags that spout racist messages, even exceedingly cryptic ones. Brigid Schulte for WaPo: The owner of a Ford truck bearing the license plate 14CV88 will have to find [...]

UPDATE: See Elena Kagan Not Gay After All? A week ago, Ben Domenech wrote a blog post about ten candidates rumored to be on the short list of nominees for replacing John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.  He asserted that Elena Kagan, Obama’s Solicitor General who is reputedly at the top of said list, [...]

Speculating on Supreme Court appointments is a great parlor game and throwing the “pick a politician” wildcard into the game is especially fun. Ezra Klein jumps in with both feet: I’ve always been partial to the idea of seeing Hillary Clinton appointed to the Supreme Court. She’s got a law degree, of course. She’s practiced [...]

It’s official: John Paul Stevens has handed in his resignation. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the court’s oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, is retiring. President Barack Obama now has his second high court opening to fill. Stevens said Friday he will step down when the court finishes its work for the [...]

A father whose Marine son was killed in Iraq has been ordered to pay the court costs of the men who picketed the funeral. On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered that Albert Snyder of York, Pa., pay costs associated with Fred Phelps’ appeal. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro [...]

As regular readers are painfully aware, I’ve been opposed to President Obama’s health care reform plan, such as it was, from the beginning.  But, apparently, it’s much worse than I thought.   Economist Thomas Sowell, one of the more thoughtful columnists in the business, sees it as the banana peel on the slippery slope to doomsday. [...]

Now that health care reform has been revived from its near death experience, it appears that it will face a series of Constitutional challenges.  My home state of Virginia has fired the opening shot. Via Twitter, no less. To emphasize how ready Virginia is to take the health care overhaul to court, take a look [...]

Chief Justice John Roberts says he’s not sure why the Supreme Court still attends the State of the Union address, indicating that perhaps it was time for that tradition to end. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama’s State of the Union address was “very troubling” and the [...]

A well-known gossip rag circulated rumors that Chief Justice John Roberts would soon resign for “personal reasons.” While the story was soon retracted, it had already spread like wildfire thanks to Twitter, blogs, and other fast-moving media. Kevin Drum was rightly dubious of the rumor but, more to to point, “curious about is where something [...]

In last night’s State of the Union speech, President Obama called out the Supreme Court’s decision overturning corporate and union spending limits, saying it “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.” Associate Justice Samuel Alito shook his head [...]

A recent Gallup poll shows that the American public agrees with the Supreme Court that campaign contributions are free speech but that most nonetheless want to limit said speech. Fifty-seven percent of Americans consider campaign donations to be a protected form of free speech, and 55% say corporate and union donations should be treated the [...]