Research

This morning, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens sent a letter to President Obama informing him that he will retire when the Court recesses this summer. 

RNC Chairman Michael Steele issued a statement thanking Justice Stevens for his service and calling on President Obama to use this opportunity to change course from the kind of out-of-the-mainstream judicial activists he has been appointing to the lower courts and instead choose a well-qualified judge who will rule based on the law, and not legislate from the bench to advance a personal ideological agenda. 

As our research briefing this afternoon notes, in poll after poll, the American people have shown clearly that is the kind of judge they would like to see on the Court. Will President Obama listen, or will he nominate another liberal activist like UC Berkley Professor Goodwin Liu?

As we detailed yesterday, Obama’s 9^th Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu omitted some 117 documents from a routine questionnaire that all nominees are required to fill out. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) made a reasonable request for extra time to review such a large number of undisclosed documents. Yet, today Roll Call reports that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy will not delay the hearing:

In a sternly worded letter Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) denied a Republican request to postpone Liu’s hearing to review the undisclosed information ... “I am disappointed that, instead, we have seen the same delays and obstructionist approach toward these nominees on the Senate floor extend to the Committee’s consideration,” Leahy wrote.

Are we to believe that Liu just happened to forget these documents, or are they so controversial that he purposely withheld them? The White House is responsible for properly vetting each of their Judicial and ... more

Today, Roll Call detailed how Goodwin Liu, the Berkeley Law professor and Obama nominee to the 9^th Circuit Court, withheld prior statements from the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Liu failed to disclose “an extraordinary” 117 items from his record… a commencement speech to the University of California-Berkeley law school, text from a panel discussion on the 2008 election and the Supreme Court, his participation in presentations on affirmative action and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, as well as a conference on school funding.

What was Liu’s excuse for not including these items?

Liu said [he] “did not think to include various occasions when I spoke at informal seminars, brown bag lunches, or student or alumni gatherings on campus or elsewhere …”

Is Liu really trying to compare leaving out a commencement speech to remarks at brown bag lunches? Withholding records from the Senate Judiciary Committee is not a minor oversight. Knowing full well that he is beyond ... more

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee has the pleasure of holding a 9^th Circuit judicial nomination hearing on Barack Obama …. Oops … we meant Goodwin Liu. It’s easy to make that mistake because Liu has made it clear that he would use the Federal bench to enact a host of liberal programs that Obama favors.

Goodwin Liu’s beliefs place him far outside the mainstream. His statements and writings regard the Constitution as merely a set of guidelines to follow, adaptable and malleable to the whims of a few. He has even gone so far as to call for interpreting the Constitution so broadly give Citizens rights to “expanded health insurance, child care, transportation subsidies, job training, and a robust earned income tax credit.”

Transportation subsidies were certainly not a part of the Founders’ vision for our country, but Liu looks at his nomination to the Federal bench not as an opportunity to serve as a fair and impartial judge, but as an “opportunity to actually get [his] ideas and ... more

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to protect free speech rights in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats have been trying to paint this decision as one that will “open the floodgates” of special interest money. Sen. Chuck Schumer went even further, attacking the Supreme Court’s decision as “un-American.” And as CBS News’ chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford notes, President Obama’s attack on the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address was just as ridiculous:

It wasn't enough that Mr. Obama, for the first time in modern history, took a direct shot at the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address, when he slammed the justices for their recent campaign finance reform decision. Six of them looked on -- including the author of the opinion, key swing vote Anthony Kennedy -- while Democrats jumped up to whoop and holler. All that, of course, was too much for Justice Samuel Alito, who shook his head and silently mouthed, "not true." The next day, the White House ... more

That’s what President Obama’s latest nominee to the federal bench says he wants to do to our founding document. Today, Democrats plan to move forward with confirming Judge David Hamilton to the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals, who said in a 2003 speech that judges should add to the constitution and use “empathy” in decisions. In defense of his comments, Hamilton said adding footnotes to the constitution wasn’t anything new, and that he was merely applying the principles of the constitution to new situations.

Is that really the kind of judge we want? To learn more about Hamilton, click here.