Baby, You Can Drive My Carr . . . Or Maybe Not

The ink is barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Carr v. United States, and already we have a contentious case in the Seventh Circuit questioning its meaning.  In Carr, the Court had to interpret a notoriously clumsy bit of legislation from 2006, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (part of the so-called Adam Walsh Act).  SORNA makes it a federal crime for a person who is required to register as a sex offender to (1) travel in interstate commerce, and (2) knowingly fail to register or update a registration.  In Carr, the Court held that a person may not be convicted under SORNA based on travel that occurred prior to SORNA’s enactment.

At the time Carr was decided, the Seventh Circuit already had pending before it United States v. Vasquez.  Vasquez was convicted of a SORNA violation on the basis of stipulated facts that showed (1) he failed to register as a sex offender as he was required to do in Illinois, and (2) he subsequently traveled from Illinois to California for some undetermined purpose.  On appeal, Vasquez argued that the statute required the government to prove he had knowledge of his federal registration obligation, and that the statute exceeded Congress’s regulatory authority under the Commerce Clause.

The Seventh Circuit rejected these arguments in a majority opionion authored by Judge Bauer. 

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What’s Good for the Goose . . .

Earlier this week, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued its decision in In Re Sherwin-Williams Co. The court upheld Judge Lynn Adelman’s decision not to recuse himself from a case pending before him in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Burton v. American Cyandamid, et al. 

Sherwin-Williams is currently before Adelman as a defendant in a personal injury action involving lead paint, heard in diversity jurisdiction. S-W believed “his impartiality might reasonably be questioned” (the relevant legal standard) because he had written an article defending the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s controversial lead paint decision in Thomas v. Mallett, 2005 WI 129.  (The article is Adelman & Fite, Exercising Judicial Power: A Response to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Critics, 91 Marq. L. Rev. 425 (2007)). In the article, Adelman defended the Court’s 04-05 term generally and praised Thomas particularly as a “positive development” which ensured that “the doors of the courthouse remain open.” Id. at 446. 

Based on this characterization, S-W sought his recusal in this case. 

Continue ReadingWhat’s Good for the Goose . . .

Sykes, Sotomayor, and Women Judges

I had the opportunity last week to attend Women Judges’ Night, an event that the Association for Women Lawyers presents annually (indeed, this year’s dinner was the thirtieth such). The Hon. Diane S. Sykes, L’84, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, delivered what was billed as a keynote but was also in the nature of after-dinner remarks. The speech was a very good example of either form, for reasons related to its warmth, its willingness to take on a substantive and even somewhat contentious topic, and the speaker’s self-awareness and humor.

Judge Sykes began with a “confess[ion]”:

[T]the idea of a “Women Judges Night” has always made me vaguely uneasy. I’m uncomfortable with the implications and consequences of gender-identity politics—or any identity politics, for that matter. When we celebrate Women Judges Night every year, what is it precisely that we’re celebrating? If we’re celebrating the appointment or election of women judges just because they are women, then I think we are making a mistake about the qualities necessary in a good judge, which of course are not gender-specific. If we’re celebrating the appointment and election of women judges because they subscribe to a gender-based brand of judging, then we are making an even bigger mistake about the nature of the judicial role. I don’t think we’re celebrating either of these things, but I do think it’s important for us to be careful not to diminish the contributions of women judges by emphasizing their gender as if it had something to do with their qualifications for judicial office or has substantive significance in their work.

She would conclude with her own assessment of what the event celebrates, along the way touching upon matters from Madison to Washington, D.C.—from her former court, a majority of whose justices were in attendance (viz., Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, Justice Annette K. Ziegler, and Justice Patience D. Roggensack, the last of whom introduced Judge Sykes), to the United States Supreme Court and, in particular, last year’s confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. 

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