Constitution Day Symposium on Judicial Elections

JustRunGreen09On Saturday, I ran a 5K in Stevens Point, in support of Justiceworks, Ltd., a nonprofit organization “dedicated to the advancement of programs and practices that secure right relationships between offenders, victims, and their communities” in Portage County.  My father lives and works in that community and asked me and my sisters to participate in the race.  It was incredibly pleasant, a flat run along the river in picture-perfect weather.

I knew very little about the organization before agreeing to do the run, and in my post-race googling I discovered that Justiceworks is a co-sponsor (along with the Portage County Bar Association and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point) of an upcoming symposium entitled Judicial Elections:  Navigating the Collision Course (note to lawyers: 7 CLE credits approved).  The conference will take place on September 17, 2009, and the lineup of presenters is impressive, including Bert Brandenburg, Executive Director of the national Justice at Stake Campaign; Thomas J. Basting, Sr., who served as President of the Wisconsin State Bar Association in 2007-08; and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson.

The conference brochure promises that the program will “raise awareness about the significant issues confronting the State of Wisconsin in its judicial elections,” noting that

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Catholics on the Court

huge_3_19675Three recent events have added a new wrinkle to a debate that has been taking place among legal scholars: what, if anything, does it mean to be both a Catholic and a Supreme Court Justice?

First, the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor has added a sixth practicing Catholic to the Supreme Court.  As a proportion of the Court’s membership, Catholics on the Court currently exceed their proportionate representation in the general public by a significant amount.  This is an astonishing historical fact, although its significance is not self-evident.

Second, Frank Colucci’s book, Justice Kennedy’s Jurisprudence, was recently reviewed  in the Wall Street Journal by Northwestern University Law School Professor John McGinnis.  Apparently, Mr. Colucci does not adhere to the conventional wisdom that Justice Kennedy is an unpredictable jurist whose primary concerns are the aggrandizement of the Supreme Court and the divination of narrow, fact-based holdings.  Instead, and somewhat unexpectedly, Corlucci argues that Justice Kennedy’s approach to the interpretation of the Constitution is best understood as seeking to advance a moral imperative.

Justice Kennedy’s objective, according to Corlucci, is to vindicate and preserve an ever increasing share of individual liberty within our broader society.  Here is the key portion of Professor McGinnis’ review:

Looking for the sources of Justice Kennedy’s moral judgment, Mr. Colucci discovers one in post-Vatican II Catholic thought, including papal encyclicals like Dignitatis Humanae.  In Roper v. Simmons, a ruling forbidding the death penalty for criminals under the age of 18, Justice Kennedy wrote that juveniles only rarely exhibit ‘irreparable corruption’ – a phrase that a secular judge might not have used.  (Justice Kennedy is an observant Catholic).  It is odd to reflect that the justice most influenced by contemporary Catholic thought may today be – because of his emphasis on individual rights – the decisive vote for preserving the abortion status quo.

It is intriguing to consider whether there is, in fact, a demonstrable connection between Catholic social thought and Justice Kennedy’s interpretation of an evolving liberty interest guaranteed by the Constitution.

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Ashcroft v. Iqbal and the Pleading Standard

Law professors teaching Civil Procedure this fall may have reason to revise their lecture notes covering the pleading standard in federal courts for the first time in a long time.  This pleading standard, as articulated in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) Rule 8(a), has presented a very low hurdle for plaintiffs since the Supreme Court addressed the issue in Conley v. Gibson in 1957.  That is, perhaps, until Ashcroft v. Iqbal , a Supreme Court detainee case decided this spring that may end up significantly heightening the pleading standard for federal civil courts.

Depending on where you look, you can find members of the legal community making different predictions of where the courts will land on Iqbal.  Some are dismissing the significance of the case, and others are declaring it a major obstacle for plaintiffs and a coup for corporate defense.

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