Gavel Grab

The first military commissions trial to be launched during the Obama administration has been interrupted, but that has not halted disturbing new questions about the prosecution.

According to a recent New York Times article, “Obama administration officials are alarmed by the first case to go to trial under revamped rules.” It is the trial at Guantanamo Bay of accused terror suspect Omar Khadr (see Gavel Grab), who was captured at age 15.

Not only was the former child soldier implicitly threatened by a U.S. interrogator with subjection to gang rape, but American officials fear the efforts they have made to reform military commission trials are undermined by the Khadr prosecution.

A grave question has subsequently been raised. In Huffington Post, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First asks in a commentary, “Is the Obama Administration Guilty of a War Crime?” Read more

The first-ever analysis of judicial election spending over the past decade not only keeps getting headlines but also is providing a popular news media tool for looking at this year’s state contests in a broader context.

When the Associated Press, for example, recently reported on the political climate heating up in Michigan–especially over elections that will determine the majority on the state Supreme Court–its article quickly turned to the judicial elections report for background.

The Michigan Supreme Court race is getting heightened attention in part due to the recent abrupt resignation of one justice (see Gavel Grab) and also due to the influential role the court could take in redrawing state political boundaries.

Candidate-sponsored TV ads are expected to fill the airwaves in Supreme Court campaigning, as well as “issue” ads  from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and state political parties, the AP said.

It relied on the recent report by the Justice at Stake Campaign and two other groups to point out that the state chamber pumped almost $3 million on TV ads into state judicial races in the past decade, while the state Democratic and Republican parties each spent about $2.6 million.

Citing the report, the AP noted that Michigan ranked sixth nationally in candidate fundraising, at $12.8 million, and third  in money spent on TV ads for high court races. Co-authoring the report were the Brennan Center for Justice, the National Institute on Money in State Politics and Hofstra University law professor James Sample.

The report is entitled “The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2000-2009: Decade of Change.” It has captured attention in both national news media  and regional publications. Read more

A Texas appeals court has tossed out a lower court’s ruling that two men who were married in Massachusetts, and who moved to Texas, could get divorced there.

The 5th District Court of Appeals said state District Judge Tena Callahan (see Gavel Grab) had incorrectly ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriages violated the equal protection right under the 14th Amendment. In addition, Texas district courts do not have the right to hear a same-sex marriage divorce case, the appeals court said.

“A person does not and cannot seek a divorce without simultaneously asserting the existence and validity of a lawful marriage,” Justice Kerry P. Fitzgerald wrote on behalf of three Republican appeals court justices, according to an Associated Press article.

“Texas law, as embodied in our constitution and statutes, requires that a valid marriage must be a union of one man and one woman, and only when a union comprises one man and one woman can there be a divorce under Texas law.”

Courts in some states where same-sex marriage is barred have rejected granting divorces for same-sex couples who were married elsewhere, and courts in some other states have permitted the divorces. Read more

No doubt that activist lawyer James Bopp Jr. of Terre Haute, Indiana gets around. One of the latest lawsuits that he’s filed challenges a new campaign finance law in Hawaii.

According to a Honolulu Star Advertiser article, the lawsuit in federal court seeks to throw out a ban on political contributions by state and county contractors. It also questions state law that sets reporting requirements for political advertising; attribution and disclaimer provisions for political advertising; a $1,000 ceiling on donations by political action committees; and state law guiding corporations to register as PACs before they make a political donation.

While Bopp contends that the laws at issue violate Free Speech protections, he has numerous critics. Bopp and his team “seem eager to let moneyed interests out-shout the voices of ordinary Americans,” said Barbara Polk, legislative chairwoman of Americans for Democratic Action/Hawaii. Some critics contend Bopp is trying to dismantle campaign finance regulations around the country.

To keep up with lawsuits that Bopp is handling in numerous states, check out Gavel Grab.

Gender barriers on some high courts keep falling. Justices seated on the Virginia Supreme Court have elected their first female chief justice, Cynthia D. Kinser, and she will assume the role in February, according to a Washington Post article.

A recent article in the ABA Journal reported that 20 women were serving as chief justices on state Supreme Courts; you can learn more from Gavel Grab.

A website created by several incumbent Maryland judges to spotlight the raunchy sayings of a judicial hopeful is only one of several sizzling judicial election dispatches from around the country at August’s end.

The website http://www.scottbeckmantherealstory.com highlights candidate T. Scott Beckman, running for Circuit Court judge in Baltimore County, and features such Beckman remarks as his pledge to “hire the hottest clerks,” according to a Baltimore Sun article. Others can not be printed in a family-oriented blog.

Beckman labeled the website “a hit job” and a “smear campaign,” and he insisted those and other remarks were not a part of his campaign,  an article at explorebaltimorecounty.com reported.

In other dispatches:

• Circuit Judge Mac Parsons launched his campaign for the Alabama Supreme Court by attacking Republican incumbent Tom Parker as lazy, according to an Associated Press report. Justice Parker fired back that the challenger is “a liberal Democratic judge” who views the court system as a paperwork factory. (Meanwhile, Republican Justice Thomas Woodall gave a $5,000 political donation to Parsons’ campaign, the Gadsden Times said.)
• A justice sitting on the Illinois Supreme Court, where Democrats hold a 4-3 majority, faces a retention vote in what “could be the state’s most vicious of the 2010 election season,” the Progress Illinois website reported. If Democratic Justice Thomas Kilbride is unseated, it would be the first such removal of a state justice by the electorate.

Two groups representing Social Security and immigration judges have asked the U.S. government to take new steps to protect them from the threat of violence.

Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, offered some of the worst horror stories at a session in Washington, according to an NPR report:

“One colleague reports that the brake lines to her car were cut while in the parking lot at work.”

“Another colleague reported that there was gang graffiti in her courtroom. During the anthrax scare, an immigration judge received a letter containing white powder. Another judge was grabbed by the robe by an irate respondent. Another judge experienced someone attempting suicide, right there, in the courtroom.” Read more

It’s hardly a new story, but now it’s squarely in the national eye.

A Los Angeles Times report documents that almost one out of eight federal judgeships is vacant across the country. This article in a major national newspaper not only underscores–but draws attention to–the impact of political partisanship in stalling judicial confirmations. The result, legal scholars suggest, is a threat to the delivery of justice.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy added his voice to those who are concerned. Without assigning blame, he told the newspaper, “It’s important for the public to understand that the excellence of the federal judiciary is at risk.”

Justice Kennedy added, “If judicial excellence is cast upon a sea of congressional indifference, the rule of law is imperiled.”

Here is how the Times sums up the dilemma: “The politicized confirmation process has left nearly 1 in 8 posts empty. Republicans say it’s part payback, but they argue that [President] Obama has been slow to nominate judges.” Read more

Some corporate political spending has become “radioactive” in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court ruling and an angry public response.

That’s the intriguing analysis offered by Eliza Newlin Carney in a National Journal article, based in part on a public backlash over big contributions by Target Co. and Best Buy Co. to a Minnesota group supporting the GOP candidate for governor. He opposes gay marriage.

Here’s a taste of the withering backlash that Carney documents:

“Since news of Target’s $150,000 donation to the pro-business group MN Forward broke in late July, irate customers have staged some 1,200 store protests; close to 300,000 have signed onto MoveOn.org’s Target boycott; more than 74,000 Facebook users have joined an anti-Target group; and a trio of investment firms has filed a shareholder resolution demanding that Target re-evaluate its political spending policies.”

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling early this year lifted key restraints on direct corporate and union election spending. Read more