Supreme Court

Onion: Supreme Court Justice Application Asks for 3 Sample Opinions

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the Onion:

WASHINGTON—The White House announced Tuesday that job seekers hoping to fill Justice David Souter’s Supreme Court seat must complete an application that includes three sample court rulings, each citing at least two federal precedents. After listing their level of education and recent work history, all applicants must fill out the form with one majority opinion, one dissenting opinion, and one decision of their choice. “It’s very important that a justice have hands-on experience with the Constitution, and this helps us get a feel for whether an applicant would be a good fit for our organization,” President Barack Obama said. “It’s okay to attach an extra sheet if you need more room.” Obama added that interested parties should stop by the White House during normal business hours and ask for Rahm, who will give them a form they can fill out in the lobby or the coffee shop across the street.

Final Filing in Arizona Snowbowl Cert Petition

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the Navajo Nation’s reply brief — Navajo Reply Brief

The Supreme Court will decide whether or not to grant the petition on June 4 (see docket).

SCIA Hearing on Carcieri v. Salazar

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

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more about “SCIA Hearing on Carcieri v. Salazar“, posted with vodpod

SCOTUSblog on the SCIA Hearing on Carcieri

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From SCOTUSblog:

Today, at 2:15 pm the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs will conduct a hearing in response to the recent Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar. The decision limited the Secretary of the Interior’s authority to place land into trust under 25 U.S.C. § 465, the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), only for Indian tribes under federal jurisdiction when the IRA was enacted in June of 1934. Prior to the decision, the Department of the Interior construed the IRA as granting authority to place land into trust under the IRA for all federally recognized tribes. Further analysis of the decision is available here.

The witnesses include Edward Lazarus, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP (prepared testimony available here); W. Ron Allen, the Secretary of the National Congress of the American Indians; and Lawrence Long, the Chairman of the Western Attorneys General.

More National Granholm Coverage

Kate Fort

Full article at the Washington Post:

Governor Granholm’s Rise to Politics

A Career That Began With a Reganesque Start

By Amy Goldstein

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 20, 2009; 3:43 PM

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is a darling of moderate Democratic politics who would become the first justice in nearly four decades without experience as a judge–and the first since the Great Depression born outside the United States.

Granholm, 50, is in her second term of a governorship that has been defined largely by the persistent economic troubles of her state, the heart of the U.S. automobile industry with unemployment that remains highest in the country.

Since she was elected in 2002, Granholm has focused on trying to lure other employers to Michigan, strengthening education, revising taxes, and ideas such as a “cool cities” initiative to deter talented young residents from moving away.

Her path to political power runs through Hollywood, Harvard Law School and a series of public-sector legal jobs of relatively low visibility until she catapulted to her first elected office as Michigan’s attorney general.

NCAI Written Testimony for the SCIA Hearing on Carcieri v. Salazar

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

NCAI Testimony to SCIA on Carcieri – final

Here is NCAI’s proposed legislative “fix”:

25 U.S.C. §479:

The Act entitled “An Act to conserve and develop Indian lands and resources; to extend to Indians the right to form business and other organizations; to establish a credit system for Indians; to grant certain rights of home rule to Indians; to provide for vocational education for Indians; and for other purposes”, approved June 18, 1934, is amended by:

Section 1: In Section 19 [25 U.S.C. § 479] deleting in the first sentence the words “now under Federal jurisdiction.”

Section 2: Actions of the Secretary taken prior to the date of enactment of this amendment pursuant to or under color of this Act [25 U.S.C. §461 et. seq.] for any Indian tribe that was federally recognized on the date of the Secretary’s action are hereby, to the extent such actions may be subject to challenge based on whether the Indian tribe was federally recognized or under federal jurisdiction on June 18, 1934, ratified and confirmed as fully to all intents and purposes as if the same had, by prior act of Congress, been specifically authorized and directed.

New Yorker Article on Chief Justice Roberts

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the New Yorker (an excerpt):

Roberts’s hard-edged performance at oral argument offers more than just a rhetorical contrast to the rendering of himself that he presented at his confirmation hearing. “Judges are like umpires,” Roberts said at the time. “Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” His jurisprudence as Chief Justice, Roberts said, would be characterized by “modesty and humility.” After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

Supreme Court Denies Cert in Two Indian Law Cases

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

The cases are Marceau v. Blackfeet Housing Authority (No. 08-881) and Seneca v. USET (No. 08-1127). The SCOTUS order list is here (see page 3 for these cases).

Our posts on Marceau are here and here and here and here. And our posts on the Seneca case are here and here.

Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm to be at White House on Tuesday

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, one of President Barack Obama’s candidates for the Supreme Court, will be at the White House on Tuesday.

An administration official says the Democratic governor is coming to the White House for an event unrelated to the Supreme Court. It is not clear whether Granholm will be meeting with Obama about the upcoming vacancy on the court.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because details of Tuesday’s event have not been announced.

Granholm is among more than six people Obama is considering for the seat on the court now held by Justice David Souter, who is retiring this summer.

The 50-year-old Granholm is a former federal prosecutor and Michigan attorney general.

NYTs Op-Ed on Supreme Court Nominations

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the NYTs:

Obama’s Choice

By H.D.S. GREENWAY

With the resignation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Barack Obama is about to make one of the most import appointments any president can make. For picking a justice for the Supreme Court will have more ramifications for the republic than any cabinet secretary or ambassador.

The United States may be a comparatively young country, but its institutions have influenced the world profoundly. The constitutional ideals put forth upon its shores in the late 18th century guided the way other societies organized themselves, from the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen in France in 1789, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, to the constitutions of dozens of other countries emerging from colonialism and Communism. From the earliest times, as the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote: Liberty to Americans meant, “first freedom under laws of their own making, and, second, the right to do anything that did not harm others.”

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