SAN FRANCISCO A conservative legal group is trying to force Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to defend California's gay marriage ban in court. The Pacific Justice Institute petitioned the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento on Monday for an emergency order that would require the two...
"The founders realized there has to be someplace where being right is more important than being popular or powerful, and where fairness trumps strength. And in our country, that place is supposed to be the courtroom."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
Federal News and Releases
The partisan standoff on judges is starting threaten our ability to administer justice. Nearly 1 in 8 federal judgeships are currently vacant, the LA Times reports, as Senate Republicans block many of President Obama's nominees. Just 47% of Obama's nominees have been approvedthe lowest rate in 30 years by a...
Congress and President Obama could do at least this much to move the unemployment needle down ever so slightly: nominate or confirm 102 judges to the federal bench. We've written a lot about this in recent months, yet this truth remains: that almost one in eight federal judgeships is vacant...
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The trial of the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay will resume in October following a two-month delay caused by the sudden illness of his attorney, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Tuesday. The same jury panel of seven U.S. military officers will return to the U.S. Navy...
A federal appeals court in Washington today unanimously denied a full-court rehearing to resolve a dispute over the role that international law plays in restricting the president's war powers. The nine active judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the request from lawyers representing Guantanamo...
After pondering the issue for more than three months, the full D.C. Circuit Court unanimously refused on Tuesday to reconsider the most sweeping opinion that Court has yet issued against the legal claims of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. But, in doing so, seven of the nine active judges on the...
WASHINGTON A federal appeals court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the detention of a Guantnamo prisoner from Yemen. But lurking just beneath the surface of its ruling was a sharp disagreement among the judges over the scope and limits of presidential power. At issue, beyond this single case, is whether international...
An overwhelming majority of U.S. voters believe that judges should be elected rather than appointed, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey. The Rasmussen results Monday came out a day before the Los Angeles Times report that a politicized appointment process has left 1 in 8 federal judgeships vacant across...
Almost one in eight U.S. judgeships is vacant, and political partisanship over confirmations is threatening the delivery of impartial justice. See details in Gavel Grab.
Days before the 2008 election, then-candidate Barack Obama said California's Proposition 8 was unnecessary and not what America's about. Now, some same-sex marriage advocates are hoping Obama's Justice Department will make a similar argument in court. The federal government is not a party to the Proposition 8 litigation, which pits...
In the latest effort to salvage authority for federal judges to control the legal fate of Guantanamo Bay detainees, lawyers for 31 of those prisoners have told the D.C. Circuit Court that they will seek to return to the Supreme Court if lower courts move to scuttle that new effort....
WASHINGTON A judge has ordered the release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee imprisoned at the island facility for more than 8 1/2 years. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy says the Obama administration has failed to show that the Yemeni detainee was part of al Qaeda or an associated force. The...
In the movement to legalize same-sex marriages in the United States, the religious right has proven a formidable and unwavering foe, and their victory in delaying the repeal of California's Proposition 8 is persuasive evidence. Since the same-sex marriage movement began in earnest some 40 years ago, religious leaders have...
WASHINGTON In June, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case of a Canadian man who contends that U.S. authorities mistook him for an al Qaida operative in 2002 and shipped him to a secret prison in Syria, where he was beaten with electrical cables and held in a grave-like...
Victoria Nourse, a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, would likely leap into the ranks of the wealthiest federal judges if she is confirmed. Nourse reported a household net worth of $19.8 million in a financial disclosure required as part of the Senate confirmation process....
