Tag: scotus

How the Supreme Court Rewrote the Constitution Part VII: Concentration Camps and the End

This is the last installment in a series on the nadir, or low point, of the U.S. Supreme Court. This was the period from 1937 to 1944, when the court stopped protecting the Constitution’s limits on the federal government. Our Constitution has never fully recovered.

The first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth installments related to how the justices initially tried to balance the demands of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal with the Constitution’s rules. In 1937, however, Roosevelt began to replace sitting justices with New Deal enthusiasts who had no prior judicial credentials. The remodeled bench successively discarded limits on federal spending, federal property ownership, and federal economic regulation. In at least one case, it abandoned habeas corpus and the right to a trial by jury.

This final installment addresses the court’s role in what was, aside from slavery, the most egregious violation of civil rights in U.S. history. It adds some observations on how the court’s abysmal record from 1937 to 1944 continues to affect us today.

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How Can Ketanji Brown Jackson Rule In Sex Discrimination Cases If She Can’t Define ‘Woman’?

Judicial confirmation hearings are rarely illuminating. Since the introduction of television cameras, they mostly serve as a way for senators to say what they want their constituents to hear and for judicial nominees to say as little as possible. Nothing is learned, at least not on purpose.

But occasionally, we learn something by accident. At Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked a seemingly innocuous question: “Can you provide a definition of the word ‘woman’?”

The nominee was unable to do so.

It might seem like a question that goes more to politics than to the job of a judge, but when sex discrimination is frequently before the court — including as recently as last year in Bostock v. Clayton County — it behooves a judge to have some inkling about what “sex” means.

Blackburn’s questioning began with a reference to the 1996 case of United States v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s policy of only admitting men by a 7-1 vote, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writing the opinion of the court. (You can watch the testimony here, beginning at about 13:10:00.) Blackburn quoted from that opinion, specifically to Ginsburg’s point that “[p]hysical differences between men and women, however, are enduring: ‘[T]he two sexes are not fungible; a community made up exclusively of one [sex] is different from a community composed of both.’”

“Do you agree with Justice Ginsburg,” Blackburn asked, “that there are physical differences between men and women that are enduring?”

It sounds like a softball — even young children know that there are physical differences between men and women. Jackson knows it, too. Everyone in that room knows it. But she declined to admit it.

“I am not familiar with that particular quote or case,” she said, which strains credulity. Had she committed that line to memory? Probably not. But to be unfamiliar with a landmark case, the most consequential majority opinion Justice Ginsburg ever authored? United States v. Virginia was surely a topic of discussion in 1996, Jackson’s third year of law school, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. It beggars belief to say she was unfamiliar with it entirely.

The senator pressed on: “Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of ‘men and women’ as ‘male and female’?”

Judge Jackson demurred. “Again, because I don’t know the case, I don’t know how I interpret it.”

So Blackburn made it even simpler: “Can you provide a definition of the word ‘woman’?”

Again, Jackson pretended to not understand something that people have understood since the beginning of time.

“I can’t,” she said. “Not in this context, I’m not a biologist.”

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If Ketanji Brown Jackson Doesn’t Know What A ‘Woman’ Is, Why Does She Use The Word So Much?

Joe Biden’s recent Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom the president has admitted was nominated in part because she is a woman, stunned listeners on Tuesday when she refused to give a definition of what a woman is.

“I can’t. … I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said after Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked her to provide a definition of the word “woman.”

But for not knowing what a “woman” is, Jackson loves to use the word. Here are 14 times she invokes the fairer sex in just the first two days of her confirmation hearings, plus 34 times she’s used the word in her legal opinions as a judge

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Republicans Received Judge Jackson Records Hours Later Than Democrats

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee received Judge Kentaji Brown Jackson’s court records hours after Democrats received them, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) admitted.

Since before Jackson’s hearings began, Republicans have said that they were having trouble receiving the full documents of Jackson’s record with the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a group created in 1984 for the stated purpose of “[reducing] sentencing disparities and [promoting] transparency and proportionality in sentencing.”

“So far, the Sentencing Commission has refused to turn over all Judge Jackson’s records from her time there,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in a March 16 Twitter thread discussing Jackson’s “alarming pattern” of leniency toward those in possession of child porn. In light of what we have learned, this stonewalling must end. We must get access to all relevant records.”

During the first round of Jackson’s hearings Monday, Judiciary Republicans still had not received the documents.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson Is A Trustee At School That Hosts Racially Segregated ‘Affinity Groups’ For Middle-Schoolers

Georgetown Day School, where Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is a member of the board of trustees, hosts racially segregated clubs, euphemistically referred to as “affinity groups,” for middle- and high-schoolers.

GDS describes these racially segregated groups as “safe spaces.” The website says that “most” of them are open to “allies” but goes on to define an affinity group as “​​a group whose members share a particular identity,” continuing to note that the groups “can help identify, interpret, interrupt and dismantle sources of oppression or discrimination.”

The only two middle-school affinity groups are for “Students of Color Mentoring,” which exclude white students. The description for the middle-school mentoring program reads:

“The MS SOC Mentoring Program continues to provide community support for any and all students who identify as Black/African/African-American, Asian/Asian-American, Middle-Eastern/Middle-Eastern American, Native-American/Native/American Indian, Latinx/Hispanic, and/or of Bi-racial/Multi-racial descent.”

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Dick Durbin blocks documents showing Ketanji Brown Jackson’s judicial record

The Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination are not going well.

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin is blocking the release of documents showing Brown Jackson’s actual record as a judge, taking a page from the tactics of impeachment-obsessed Rep. Adam Schiff. That’s how Democrats do hearings these days.

 According to John Solomon’s Just The News:

The Biden administration is keeping more than 48,000 pages of records about Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson from senators reviewing her nomination, including documents about her time at the U.S. Sentencing Commission that she has made a central part of her professional story.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is “hiding” records from Jackson’s time as vice chair of the Sentencing Commission, where she championed leniency for child predators, says Michael Davis, former chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Monday that 16,000 pages of substantive content has been released on Jackson, compared to the 48,000 pages withheld by the White House under the Presidential Records Act and FOIA exemptions.

…and…

“Durbin has refused a request by Republican senators to look at her records on the sentencing commission,” Davis told “Just the News – Not Noise” on Monday, hours after Jackson’s first day of testimony in front of the committee weighing her nomination to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Which signals that there is something they are trying to hide.

According to the Article3Project, Brown Jackson sentenced perverts, predators, and child molesters to less-than-recommended jail and prison time on a consistent basis.

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