Slow-Walking the Nominations Process in Committee

The Judiciary Committee reported three nominees to the Senate floor at its Executive Meeting Thursday morning.  Committee votes on Richard Taranto to fill an appellate seat on the Federal Circuit and Robin Rosenbaum to fill a seat in the Southern District of Florida were supposed to be taken on March 15.  However, due to the failure of sufficient committee members to appear on that day (seven of the Democratic committee members were present, but Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was the only Republican to appear), the Committee was two members short of the quorum required...

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This Week in Judicial Nominations

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Corporate Court Decides Insider Trading Case

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued its opinion (.pdf download) in Credit Suisse Securities v. Simmonds, once again rendering a decision that limits the ability of plaintiffs to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable.The case arises out of a series of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) during the tech bubble of the late 1990s. The plaintiff, Vanessa Simmonds, was an investor who owned tech stocks underwritten by Credit Suisse and other investment banks. Simmonds alleges that underwriters for these IPOs manipulated stock prices using short-swing transactions in violation of the insider trading laws.The...

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A Question of Integrity Receives Telly Award

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-2327420-4']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); We're very pleased to announce that AFJ's original short documentary, A Question of Integrity:...

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Confirmations for District Court Judges in Utah, New York, and D.C.

This afternoon, the Senate confirmed Judge David Nuffer to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Utah, and Ronnie Abrams to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, both by overwhelmingly bipartisan votes of 96-2.  Additionally, Rudolph Contreras was confirmed to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by an unopposed voice vote.Nuffer, who since 2003 has been serving full time as a United States Magistrate Judge for the District of Utah, was nominated to the District Court on June 29, 2011....

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Nonsense: House Bill Conflates Regulatory Uncertainty with Economic Uncertainty

This Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a markup of HR4078, the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act. The act would impose a moratorium on all “significant regulatory action” until the national employment rate falls below six percent. As Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said in the markup yesterday, the bill is just “nonsense and is based on  nonsense.”Regulatory actions by the government enforce standards for clean water, safe food, child-safe toys, and privacy protection. Regulations prevent unsafe business practices from jeopardizing the health and rights of all Americans. But Republicans...

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The Aftermath of Corporate Court’s Generic Drug Ruling

In PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, decided last term, the Supreme Court ruled that a generic-drug manufacturer cannot be held liable in state court for failing to inform the FDA that its label inadequately warns consumers of health risks. As Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent, the majority’s holding in PLIVA created disparate liability schemes for brand name and generic drugs leading to “absurd consequences.” AFJ and others noted at the time that the 5-4 ruling was likely to have wide-reaching effects, since generic drugs make up 75-80 percent of the prescription drug market. Yesterday, the New York...

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A Right to Sue the Government (Just Not Corporations)

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued its decision (.pdf download) in Sackett v. EPA, holding that the plaintiffs are entitled to judicial review of an EPA compliance order issued under the Clean Water Act. The Sacketts bought a half-acre of land in a wetland area and, without seeking any environmental permits, filled it with dirt and rock in preparation for building a home. The EPA issued an order against the Sacketts to restore the property to its prior condition on the grounds that the land was wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act. The Sacketts went to court to seek court review of the...

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Groh, Fitzgerald Confirmed to District Court Seats

Yesterday the Senate confirmed Judge Gina Marie Groh to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 95 to 2 and Michael Fitzgerald to a seat on the United States District Court for the Central District of California by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 91-6.Groh, who since 2006 has been serving as a judge on the 23rd Judicial Circuit Court of West Virginia, was nominated to the District Court on May 19, 2011. On October 6, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee reported her nomination to the full Senate on a unanimous...

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Disappointed by Senate's Return to Inadequate Confirmation Pace

PRESS RELEASE For Immediate ReleaseALLIANCE FOR JUSTICE DISAPPOINTED BY SENATE’S RETURN TO INADEQUATE CONFIRMATION PACE Washington, D.C., March 14, 2012—Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron issued the following statement regarding the deal reached by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow votes on 14 judicial nominees over the next two months:We are disappointed by the United States Senate’s continued delay in carrying out its constitutional responsibility. With 102 vacancies in the federal courts, the Senate should make the staffing of...

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While District Court Case Filings Rise, Republicans Obstruct District Court Nominees

Only one day after Republican obstruction forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to file cloture petitions on 17 long-pending district court nominees, the nonpartisan Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts released a report finding that “total civil and criminal filings in the district courts rose 2 percent to 367,692 in fiscal year 2011.”The Administrative Office data reflected a surging caseload in types of cases that are critically important to millions of American businesses and individuals.  For instance, filings in consumer credit cases rose 15%, filings in intellectual...

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What is at Stake in the Healthcare Cases

Guest post by Professor Timothy Jost The challenge to the Affordable Care Act currently pending in the Supreme Court has been billed as the most important Supreme Court case of the decade. It is certainly that, and for more reasons than one.The case before the Supreme Court involves four issues. The first, and most widely publicized, involves the constitutionality of the ACA’s requirement that most Americans be insured. The second question is whether the federal courts can hear a challenge to the “minimum coverage requirement” now or whether they must wait until a tax is imposed to enforce the...

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Gulf Oil Spill Legal Processes Wind Down

On March 3rd, a major development occurred in the ongoing legal fallout from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill, when a mass settlement was reached between BP and the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee. The settlement occurred nearly two years after an explosion on the rig leased to and operated by BP killed eleven workers, injured seventeen more, and unleashed a torrent of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  In the spring and summer of 2010, the world watched as over 200 million gallons of oil flowed for almost three months, pouring into the open water, damaging economic livelihoods...

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Supreme Court Calls for Reargument in Human Rights Case

In an unexpected move on Monday, the Supreme Court ordered expanded arguments in the case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, on appeal from the Second Circuit. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case just last Tuesday, but less than a week later, it ordered the parties to submit new briefs on the question of extraterritoriality—that is, whether the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) covers violations of international law committed overseas. In this case, multinational oil companies are alleged to have aided and abetted human rights atrocities committed against environmental activists by the Nigerian...

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Study Shows that Justices Share Unusually Narrow Life Experiences

On Sunday, the Washington Post looked at the life experience of the current Supreme Court justices. It examines a paper written by Professor Benjamin Barton called “An Empirical Study of Supreme Court Justice Pre-Appointment Experience” that reveals just how narrow the pre-Court life experiences of justices of the Roberts Court have been.From the establishment of the Court through the tenure of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, there had always been at least one justice on the Supreme Court who held elective office. Since the confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito, however, nobody on the Supreme Court...

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Bringing ethics reform to the Court's front door

Nan Aron with Congresswomen Eleanor Holmes Norton and Louise SlaughterAlliance for Justice President Nan Aron yesterday joined members of Congress, several concerned organizations, 212 law professors, and over 100,000 citizens in calling for the Supreme Courtto voluntarily agree to formally adopt the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges and put an end to the ethical ambiguity that has damaged public confidence in the Court and its justices.Speaking at a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court along with Congresswomen Louise Slaughter and Eleanor Holmes Norton and Congressman Earl Blumenauer,...

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Report Finds Wide Variations in Federal Sentencing

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse [TRAC], a non-partisan research organization associated with Syracuse University, has released a report on federal criminal sentencing of the last five years.  The report analyzes over 370,000 criminal cases completed in federal courts during the last five years and compared the records of each judge to the sentencing of other judges on their court. TRAC’s findings suggest that wide variations exist between sentences handed down for similar cases by judges within the same district. The widest variations in sentencing were found in drug cases,...

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Action on Judicial Nominations

Steps taken this week to address the judicial vacancy crisis that has left 1 in 10 seats on the federal bench empty include the confirmation of one judge, hearings for three nominees, a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on one nominee, and the nomination of new people to become Article III judges.On Monday, the Senate voted to confirm Margo Kitsy Brodie to be a United States District Court judge in the Eastern District of New York by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 86-2.  Due to obstruction from Senate Republicans, it took 145 days for Judge Brodie to receive her final confirmation vote...

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Experts discuss Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum

The New York Times this week featured a "Room for Debate" column on the case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which was argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Participants in the debate included Tyler Giannini and Susan Farbstein of Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, who submitted an amicus brief in the case. To learn more about the Kiobel, check out Gianni and Farbstein's recent analysis for AFJ's Justice Watch blog, or download our comprehensive report on the case.At stake in Kiobel is whether corporations can be held liable for participating in the commission of...

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Supreme Court Allows Corporations to Escape Liability for Death Caused by Asbestos Exposure

On February 29, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Kurns v. Railroad Friction Products Corp., using preemption doctrine to allow the corporate defendants to escape liability for a railroad worker’s death likely caused by his exposure to asbestos from defendants’ products. The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Thomas, affirmed the Third Circuit’s holding that the federal Locomotive Inspection Act (“LIA”) preempts plaintiffs’ state tort law claims for design defects and failure to warn.In this case, railroad parts manufacturers were sued by the widow and estate executor of a railroad...

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