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| 7/12 |
| 2005/10/27-29 [Politics/Domestic/Crime, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:40289 Activity:moderate |
10/27 Miers has WITHDRAWN!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4382370.stm
\- But the CSUA Politburo is asking her to reconsider!
\_ I have to admit I am suprised by this. I thought the WH could make
the Congress roll over. The next nominee ought to be interesting...
\_ Apparently Republicans basically told Bush that unless there
is some good proof that she has a grasp of constitutional
issues there was no way she was getting confirmed. Imagine
that, requiring someone interpreting the constitution to
be an expert on the constitution.
\_ CJ John Marshall only had about a month of legal edu
but is widely regarded as one of the finest justices
to serve on the ussc.
Personally I think that we should have *fewer* judges
and lawyers on the ussc and more intelligent regular
people in the ussc.
I opposed the Miers nomination not b/c she wasn't a
judge or a constitutional expert, but b/c she just
didn't seem bright enough to serve on the ussc.
Personally, I think they should nominate posner (if
partha is unavailable). - #10 psb fan
partha is unavailable).
\_ I have no problem with the "brain the size of
a planet" exception.
\_ Nice quote on dailykos:
It is a sad day when your choices for Supreme Court
Justice appear to be 'unqualified hack who may do some
damage' and 'qualified nutcase who will reap destruction a
cross the land'
\_ WHo's the nutcase? Roberts?
\_ The Scalia clone to come.
\- the comment about JM's legal educ is misleading.
it was quite common for lawyers "back then" to
have more of an apprentice style of legal educ.
i think law is sort of different from say biology.
today a bio prof has bs/ms/phd/postdoc ... which
can easily be a decade of post-grad educ. while a
newly minted law prof may be 3 yrs of law school
and maybe two 1yr clerkships.
\_ The Thomas/Scalia clone to come.
\_ Interesting that you chose Scalia and not
Thomas (the argument that Thomas is a Scalia
clone does not hold water, ex. Scalia concu-
red in Raich but Thomas dissent).
\- this is somewhat interesting:
http://voteview.com/the_unidimensional_supreme_court.htm
\- i dont believe SCALIA and THOMAS had the highest
percentage of voting the same way. Although it
is possible of the 7-2 decisions, they are most
likely to be S+T vs everbody else.
\_ Emphasis on the "QUALIFIED" in qualified nutcase |
| 7/12 |
|
| news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4382370.stm Printable version US top court nominee steps down Harriet Miers and President George W Bush Harriet Miers' nomination has placed Mr Bush in the spotlight The Texas lawyer nominated to the US Supreme Court by President George W Bush, Harriet Miers, has withdrawn as a nominee to the court. Ms Miers, who has served as White House counsel for Mr Bush but has no ju dicial experience, has come in for criticism from both Democrats and Rep ublicans. She was reprimanded by Senators for giving "incomplete to insulting" answ ers to written questions. The withdrawal of Ms Miers is seen as a significant blow to Mr Bush. Her decision comes amid tense times for the White House, which is current ly waiting for news on possible indictments of senior administration fig ures in connection with a CIA leak case. Mr Bush's approval ratings have meanwhile been plummeting, and his appare nt inability to push his choice through is thought likely to raise fresh concerns as to what he can achieve in his second term. Bipartisan opposition Ms Miers' nomination had drawn criticism from both sides of the political divide. Text of Miers' letter Conservative Republicans were sceptical of Ms Miers' suitability for the court on ideological grounds. Several questioned her attitudes on the touchstone issue of abortion, whi le others doubted her understanding of constitutional law. Democrat opponents accused the president of cronyism, pointing to persona l memos sent during Mr Bush's days as governor of Texas as evidence that her friendship with the president was her chief qualification for the j ob. Mr Bush had indeed made much of his personal relationship with Ms Miers, and had asked the country to trust him in his choice of a relative unkno wn. However, correspondents say, it appears the country was not prepared to d o this. Clashing interests In a letter confirming her decision to withdraw from the nomination proce ss, Ms Miers wrote that continuing to seek Senate approval would prove t o be a burden on the White House. confirms my deep respect and admiration for he r US President George W Bush It would not be in the interests of the US to reveal details of her work within the White House, she added. Mr Bush praised Ms Miers for her decision, which he said was motivated by a desire not to allow Senators access to confidential White House docum ents. "Harriet Miers' decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers - and confirms my dee p respect and admiration for her," Mr Bush said. The president said he would fill the Supreme Court seat, due to be vacate d by Sandra Day O'Connor, in "a timely manner". |
| voteview.com/the_unidimensional_supreme_court.htm The Unidimensional Supreme Court 10 July 2003 In a recent piece in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Lawrence Sirovich analyzed the voting patterns of the current Supreme Co urt ("A Pattern Analysis of the Second Rehnquist US Supreme Court." This piece received a great deal of p ublicity in the popular science press. Martin and CJR in turn builds upon path-breaking work by Glendon Schubert (The Judicial Mind, 1965, Evanston: Northwestern University Press), David Rohde and H arold Spaeth (Supreme Court Decision Making, 1976, San Francisco: W H Freeman), Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth (The Supreme Court and the Att itudinal Model, 1993, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Lee Epstei n and Jack Knight (The Choices Justices Make, 1998, Washington, DC: CQ P ress), Bernard Grofman and Timothy Brazill ("Identifying the Median Just ice on the Supreme Court Through Multidimensional Scaling: Analysis of ' Natural Courts' 1953-1991." multidimensional scaling work the norma l practice is to discard the unanimous votes because they contain no inf ormation about the ideal points of the voters unless strong assumptions are made about the proposal process. Sirovich included the 220 unanimous votes in his analysis. Consequently, when he performed a SVD on the 9 b y 468 matrix the first singular vector was, in effect, (1/3, 1/3, 1/3, 1 /3, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3) -- that is, the first singular vector picke d up a "unanimous" dimension with all the justices almost at the same po int (see Table 3, p 7434). In Table 2 Sirovich shows the Joint Probability for Disagreement for the Court. This table is reproduced below: Breyer 000000 011966 025000 020940 029915 035256 011752 016239 035897 Ginsburg 011966 000000 026790 025214 030769 036966 009615 014530 036752 Kennedy 025000 026709 000000 015598 012179 018803 024786 032692 017735 OConnor 020940 025214 015598 000000 016239 020726 022009 032906 020513 Rehnquist 029915 030769 012179 016239 000000 014316 029274 040171 013675 Scalia 035256 036966 018803 020726 014316 000000 033761 043803 006624 Souter 011752 009615 024790 022009 029274 033761 000000 016880 033120 Stevens 016239 014530 032692 032906 040171 043803 016880 000000 043590 Thomas 035897 036752 017735 020513 013675 006624 033120 043590 000000 Note that this table does not exactly match Sirovich's Table 2 in that his table has rounding errors. For example, the disagreement probability of the pair (O'Connor, Kennedy) is shown as 0156 and the disagreement probability of the pair (Kennedy, O'Connor) is shown as 015598. This should have absolutely no effect upon my analysis below. OC produces the following rank ordering : 1 STEVENS 23 291 0921 1000 2 BREYER 30 290 0897 2000 3 GINSBURG 18 291 0938 3000 4 SOUTER 19 293 0935 4000 5 KENNEDY 13 293 0956 5000 6 OCONNOR 29 290 0900 6000 7 REHNQUIS 20 292 0932 7000 8 SCALIA 13 292 0955 8000 9 THOMAS 16 292 0945 9000 In the ordering above, the number just to the right of the Justice's name is the classification error and the number to the right of that is the total number of votes cast by the member. For example, placing Justice S tevens at rank 1 resulted in 23 classification errors out of a total of 291 votes cast. The rank-ordering from OC reverses the positions of Kennedy and O'Connor and Breyer and Ginsburg compared with the configurations above. The OC results suggest the possible presence of a weak second dimension. Note that the second dim ension is simply a Breyer-O'Connor dimension. The bottom line is that the current Court is basically unidimensional. |