TRUMP HITS JUDICIAL SPEED BUMPS FOR FIRST TIME | What To Learn From Kozinski Revelations
December 14, 2017
SPEED BUMPS AHEAD
|Richard Wolf with USA Today reports that although The Don’s race to remake the federal judiciary has so far been his biggest achievement, two of PRESIDENT TRUMP’S judicial candidates just hit a wall and are now dead in the water. Wolf writes, “Those two nominations threaten to mar an otherwise successful effort, led by White House counsel Don McGahn and outside adviser Leonard Leo, to reverse the federal judiciary’s liberal tilt.”
THE DYING DEATH PENALTY
|Pete Williams with NBC News notes that according to the annual report of a group that tracks the death penalty, the number of people put to death in 2017 was near historically low levels. Only last year’s totals were lower according to the Death Penalty Information Center. “2017 also brought the lowest level of public approval for the death penalty in 25 years,” Williams writes. “The latest Gallup poll found 55 percent saying they support it. In 1994, the height of public acceptance, approval was at 80 percent.”
TOP-ED
|“For the 20 intervening years, I have promised myself that if JUDGE KOZINSKI was ever to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, I would testify about the dozens of conversations I’d had over the years with other clerks and lawyers about Kozinski’s behavior, about the strange hypersexualized world of transgressive talk and action that embodied his chambers.” Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick shares her experiences with Judge Kozinski, her own complicity in his behavior and the current reckoning she and the legal community face in the wake of these revelations.
FOUND IT IN SILENCE
|Alison Frankel with Reuters reports on the sexual misconduct claims against JUDGE KOZINSKI and the law clerks who have now broken their silence and their code of confidentiality to bring this behavior to light. “All of the experts agreed that law clerks’ duty of confidentiality ends when a clerk believes a federal judge has done something wrong outside of the deliberative process. The confidentiality guidelines for law clerks are intended to preserve the judiciary’s integrity, they said. Judges must be free to air controversial ideas when they’re discussing cases with their clerks without fear those thoughts will become public, said law professor CHARLES GEYH of the University of Indiana. But Geyh and five other experts said they believe the fundamental goal of the confidentiality guidelines would be subverted if the rules forced law clerks to be silent about judicial misconduct.”