Category Archives: Politics

An International View of the Supreme Court Confirmation Process

 This guest post is by Patricia Villa Berger, a J.S.D. candidate at Chicago-Kent College of Law. The debate over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court captured the nation’s attention. Political analysts and legal experts studied this story from the perspective of party politics, the upcoming midterm elections, gender relations, judicial virtues and temperament, standards … Continue reading An International View of the Supreme Court Confirmation Process

Defending the Supreme Court—The Justices Speak Out

In the wake of the highly contentious confirmation hearing of Justice Kavanaugh, the Justices are speaking out about the importance of the Supreme Court’s independence from politics. At an event last week at the University of Minnesota Law School, Chief Justice John Roberts made a point of saying that he wanted to discuss “events in … Continue reading Defending the Supreme Court—The Justices Speak Out

The Rise and Fall of the No-Litmus-Test Rule

For decades, presidential candidates disclaimed the idea that they would have “litmus tests” for their nominees to the Supreme Court. Republicans and Democrats alike agreed that to demand that their judicial nominees decide particular cases particular ways would be wrong. Judicial litmus tests were bad. They were what candidates accused opponents of having. In the … Continue reading The Rise and Fall of the No-Litmus-Test Rule

The Court and the 2016 Election—Lessons From History

When it comes to the role of the Supreme Court on the presidential campaign trail, how does the 2016 election compare to past elections? For all its precedent-shattering and unpredictable qualities, the 2016 campaign basically fell into a predictable dynamic when it came to the candidates’ treatment of the Court. As I discussed in my … Continue reading The Court and the 2016 Election—Lessons From History

The Court and the 2016 Election—Explaining the Forgotten Issue

As I discussed in my earlier posts on the Supreme Court and the 2016 presidential election, although the future of the Court played a major role in the election for many voters and for advocacy groups, the candidates themselves seemed uninterested in the issue. Trump released a list from which he promised to select a … Continue reading The Court and the 2016 Election—Explaining the Forgotten Issue

The Court and the 2016 Election—Great Expectations

In the lead-up to virtually every presidential election over the past few decades, legal commentators and journalists have predicted that the future of the Supreme Court would feature prominently as a campaign issue. But these predictions have been consistently wrong—or at least considerably inflated. While the Court has featured as an issue on the campaign … Continue reading The Court and the 2016 Election—Great Expectations

The Supreme Court and the 2016 Presidential Election

What role did the Supreme Court play in the 2016 election? This is the question I consider in an article that will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Chicago-Kent Law Review. The article is based on a paper I presented at a symposium organized by ISCOTUS last fall; the law review will be … Continue reading The Supreme Court and the 2016 Presidential Election