Search

This article contends that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., U.S. President George W. Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, has consistently favored big-business litigants as he has pushed the federal appeals court in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a conservative direction. The author reports that Alito has, with few exceptions, sided with employers over employees in discrimination lawsuits and in favor of corporations over investors in securities fraud cases.

It may be a first in the annals of government secrecy: Declassifying documents to mark the anniversary of their leak to the press. But that is what will happen Monday, when the federal government plans to finally release the secret government study of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers 40 years after it was first published by The New York Times. At first blush, it sounds like the release of one of the worst-kept secrets in history -- finally unlocking the barn door four decades after the horses bolted. The study, after all, has already been published by The Times and other newspapers, resulting in a landmark First Amendment decision by the Supreme Court. It has been released in book form more than once. But it turns out that those texts have been incomplete: When all 7,000 pages are released Monday, officials say, the study can finally be read in its original form. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Relying on an antiquated provision of the New York City Charter, a civil rights lawyer filed papers in State Supreme Court on Friday requesting a judicial hearing on City Council spending practices that have recently come under intense scrutiny. The hearing, known as a summary inquiry, would not determine guilt or innocence, but would merely lay out the facts surrounding the case for public review. Federal prosecutors have been examining a longtime Council practice in which members appropriate discretionary funds to nonexistent organizations and channel the funds to other programs without mayoral approval. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Supreme Court has an opportunity to reconsider its disastrous Citizens United decision. The justices should take it. The damaging effects of unlimited spending by corporations and unions on elections -- honestly examined -- should cause the court to overturn or, at the very least, limit that ruling. On Friday, the justices granted a stay of a Montana state court ruling that upheld a state anticorruption campaign finance law. The stay gives the parties in the Montana case time to file papers to seek Supreme Court review. In supporting the stay, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, ''Montana's experience, and experience elsewhere since this court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations 'do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.' '' She was quoting Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Citizens United, in which he claimed that expenditures might result in ''influence over or access to elected officials'' but would not ''corrupt'' them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Watergate scandal, he drew Richard M. Nixonnailing himself to a cross. He stood Dick Cheney at a vast graveyard of veterans, saying, ''For seven years, we did everything to keep you safe.'' And on the frieze over the Supreme Court, he etched the hallowed words: ''Of the insurance co's. By the insurance co's. And for the insurance co's.'' Paul Conrad's rapier editorial cartoons in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and other papers slashed presidents, skewered pomposity and exposed what he saw as deception and injustice for six decades. Subjects squirmed. Readers were outraged and delighted. And he won a host of awards, including three Pulitzer Prizes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three decades after the Supreme Court ruled that immigration violations cannot be used as a basis to deny children equal access to a public school education, one in five school districts in New York State is routinely requiring a child's immigration papers as a prerequisite to enrollment, or asking parents for information that only lawful immigrants can provide. The New York Civil Liberties Union, which culled a list of 139 such districts from hundreds of registration forms and instructions posted online, has not found any children turned away for lack of immigration paperwork. But it warned in a letter to the state's education commissioner on Wednesday that the requirements listed by many registrars, however free of discriminatory intent, ''will inevitably discourage families from enrolling in school for fear that they would be reported to federal immigration authorities.'' [NYT] [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A bit of the fog is beginning to lift on the work and thinking of Elena Kagan, President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. An initial perusal of thousands of pages of documents from her years in the Clinton White House show her to be an adept centrist -- much like her old boss -- who tried to remain thoughtful while shielding President Bill Clinton from ideological extremes. It is hard to find anything in the 90,000-odd pages of papers released so far that shows whether Ms. Kagan will be an effective restraint on the Roberts Court's aggressive march to the right. She was, after all, a mid- to senior-level bureaucrat in the 1990s, working for a White House that could twist itself into knots trying to find the midpoint on every issue. Her job often required her to become a contortionist, searching for principled positions that would not inflame a newly Republican Congress or a generally conservative Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One day the constitution of Colorado is the highest law of the state. The next day it's waste paper. ROBERT F. WILLIAMS, a Rutgers law professor, on the impact of the Supreme Court ruling striking down a ban on political spending by corporations. [A1] [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

STANDING on the steps of the federal courthouse in New Haven, the lawyer Karen Torre reveled in her clients' victory in a recent case before the Supreme Court. She anointed her clients -- the white firefighters who scored well on a promotion test -- ''a symbol'' for millions of Americans who are ''tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity.'' But the Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision last month -- that New Haven should not have scrapped the test -- perpetuates profound misconceptions about the capacity of paper-and-pencil tests to gauge a person's potential on the job. Exams like the one the New Haven firefighters took are neither designed nor administered to identify the employees most qualified for promotion. And Ms. Torre's identity-politics sloganeering diverts attention from what we need most: a clear-eyed reassessment of our blind faith in entrenched testing regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Monday defended her membership in an all-female networking club, telling senators preparing for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing that the group did not discriminate in an inappropriate way. Judge Sotomayor made the remarks in a cover letter for 10 documents the White House submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The papers supplement a trove of documents and videos, along with a response to a questionnaire, that she turned over earlier this month. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

-- It was a hypothetical question in a Supreme Court argument, and it was posed almost 40 years ago. But it managed to anticipate and in some ways to answer President Obama's argument for withholding photographs showing the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. What if, Justice Potter Stewart asked a lawyer for The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, a disclosure of sensitive information in wartime ''would result in the sentencing to death of 100 young men whose only offense had been that they were 19 years old and had low draft numbers?'' The Times's lawyer, Alexander M. Bickel, tried to duck the question, but the justice pressed him: [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Supreme Court handed Microsoft a defeat on Monday by refusing to rule on its request to halt an antitrust suit against it. The suit was brought in 2004 by Novell, based in Waltham, Mass., which said in court papers that Microsoft had ''deliberately targeted and destroyed'' its WordPerfect and QuattroPro programs to protect its Windows operating system monopoly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents the first article of two on the Blackmun Papers which detail the evolution of Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. His role in Roe vs. Wade and how it defined his career in some ways; Journey from a Richard Nixon appointee to one of the most liberal of the sitting justices; Collection of a half-million letters notes, memos and journals which provide a full portrait of the man and offer insights into the life of the court in the last part of the 20th century; Listing of major cases during his time on the bench; Opinions on the death penalty, abortion and significant issues; Examples of documents.

Focuses on two legal decisions issued by the United States (US) Supreme Court on June 5, 2000 which reaffirmed the right to privacy of US citizens. Constitutional basis of the concept of privacy; Information on the right of parents to raise their own children; Details on the right of individuals to conceal their private papers.

Presents excepts from papers filed in the United States Supreme Court on June 1, 1998 by President Bill Clinton, in response to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's motion for an expedited review of claims, which will prohibit testimonies of some of President Clinton's top aides.