![]() Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sent a message to federal judges nationwide urging them to think twice about hiring as clerks any Yale Law School students who participated in the protest.įrom Georgetown to Yale, free speech controversies roil top law schoolsĬonservative judge urges U.S. Senior Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. The protest drew widespread attention, joining larger national debates about campus free speech. “My administration will be in serious discussion with our students about our policies and norms for the rest of the semester.” David Erickson/AP CNN A single conservative judge in Texas has provoked sudden health care and legal chaos by effectively halting the nationwide use of a popular abortion drug by the end of. “I expect far more from our students, and I want to state unequivocally that this cannot happen again,” she wrote. However, she said some students were "rude and insulting" to law school faculty and staff and some continued to be disruptive from outside the room where the panel occurred. Gerken said the university maintains a three-warning protocol, and the 120 protesters who attended the March 10 panel left the room after the first warning. Waggoner, who is general counsel of the conservative religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom, previously defended a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding in a different Supreme Court case. Supreme Court case in which the high court found that a student could sue Georgia public university officials for violating his rights by barring him from distributing religious literature on campus. The school's Federalist Society chapter had invited attorney Kristen Waggoner to speak about her role in a U.S. “ is a professional school, and this is not how lawyers interact.” “This is an institution of higher learning, not a town square,” Gerken wrote in a message to students, faculty, and staff that underlined the school’s commitment to free speech. ![]() ![]() Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Byron White and Samuel Alito have all had a major impact on the interpretation of US law.(Reuters) - Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken on Monday called the behavior of some Yale Law students who protested a controversial campus speaker “unacceptable,” marking her first public comments on the March 10 incident that spurred a wave of discussion about free speech at the elite school. Nowhere is this concept more important than on the US Supreme Court, where judicial interpretation sets the ultimate legal precedent. Conservative judges not only need to practice judicial restraint, they must also take steps to overturn unconstitutional decisions. Perhaps the most important role of a conservative judiciary is securing the courts against judicial activism by liberal judges aiming to reinvent the Constitution. When asked by a law student about the best first step toward someday securing a federal judgeship, Justice Antonin Scalia quickly replied, “Get involved in politics.” Having defended themselves against the political slings and arrows of the nomination and confirmation process, new justices are immediately expected to function as nonpartisan and objective triers of fact and interpreters of the law. For example, when the decidedly conservative President Donald Trump made his first Supreme Court appointment in 2017, he successfully nominated conservative Judge Neal Gorsuch to replace the recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, a standout on the list of most conservative justices.Īfter being nominated by the president, hopeful new Supreme Court justices face politically-charged public hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee and final confirmation by a majority vote of the full Senate. Presidents typically nominate justices who share their own political beliefs, if not party affiliation. It is even harder to separate Supreme Court justices from their political philosophy when it plays such a major role in their being chosen to serve. Today, it is commonly assumed that the justices’ votes, especially on high-profile cases, reflect both their political and legal philosophies. However, with the realities of politics and public opinion being what they are, the nine justices are typically classified as being conservative, moderate, or liberal in their interpretations of law and what constitutes “justice.” The influence of politics on the judicial branch dates back to the “ midnight judges” scandal of 1801 when Federalist Party President John Adams battled his own Anti-Federalist Party Vice President Thomas Jefferson over the appointments of 42 judges. In fact, America’s Founding Fathers intended that the justices of the Supreme Court should be blind to politics, looking only to their knowledge of case law and the Constitution for guidance. Supreme Court, it doesn’t even mention politics. While the Constitution of the United States creates the U.S.
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