Best of the Blogs

Time for a new feature here at the Marquette University Faculty Blog.  From time to time the editors of the blog will share links to some of the more interesting recent law-related posts appearing on the blogosphere.  I will get things started.

Over at Scotusblog, Tom Goldstein has an excellent round up of the recently concluded Supreme Court term.  It is commonplace to read broad generalizations about the Roberts Court in the media lately, for example during the hearings on the nomination of Elena Kagan.  Is this an activist Court, rejecting precedent and beholden to corporate interests?  Or has the Court found its moorings once again after years of drifting along according to the whims of Justice Kennedy?  Tom takes a cold hard look at the evidence, and his conclusions may surprise you.  You can read his post here.

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Super Mujer: Justice Sonia Sotomayor as a Role Model

When President Barack Obama nominated Justice Sonia Sotomayor a year ago, the debate surrounding her confirmation included a wide array of scrutiny.  Some of the items of discussion were more relevant and more substantive than others.

As the US Supreme Court’s first Latina, third female, and first Type 1 Diabetic to serve on the bench, the greatest amount of focus seemed to fall upon her non-legal, personal history.  Particularly, as this blog has noted, the confirmation hearings concentrated on whether that personal history and her self-identified “Wise Latina”-ness would enhance or detract from her ability to effectively and fairly “say what the law is.”

Nearly a year after her confirmation, the evaluation of the Wise Latina’s first session as a Justice has already begun.  But what if, a year later, we approached the discussion concerning her role on the Court from another direction?  Instead of a debate centered only on Justice Sotomayor’s specific job performance, the discussion might also include the value that comes from choosing a role model that can inspire the underrepresented within the legal community.

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From M’Naghten to Hinckley to Clark: “The Incredible Shrinking Insanity Defense”

In 1843, Daniel M’Naghten (left) killed the secretary of the Prime Minister of England.  Medical evidence introduced at his murder trial indicated that he suffered paranoid delusions, leading to his acquittal and eventually to judicial recognition of something like the modern insanity defense. 

After a period of expansion in the mid-twentieth century, the insanity defense has been progressively restricted since John Hinckley’s successful use of the defense during his trial on charges arising from his attempted assassination of President Reagan.  Janie Kim now recounts the story of the “incredible shrinking insanity defense,” as she calls it, in a fascinating new paper on SSRN.

She focuses particularly on the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in Clark v. Arizona. 

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