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Finances Disclosed by Judicial Nominees, Including Former Cravath Partner

EmploymentCrossing — Thu, 26 May 2011 15:37:56 +0000

Former anti-trust partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and judicial nominee Katherine Forrest released her financial disclosure statements. Forrest is deputy attorney general at the Justice Department and Obama’s nominee for federal district court in the Southern District of New York. Other Obama nominees Mary Lewis, Edgardo Ramos, and Alison Nathan have also released their financial disclosure statements.

Read the full article here:

Judicial Nominees, Including Former Cravath Partner, Disclose Finances

Heard it from a friend who…

joshua — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:55:04 +0000

There are three things I miss about the 80′s. 1) The music 2) Judicial Nominees getting a floor vote and 3) News outlets that weren’t so pressed to provide minute by minute updates and took the time to research and verify stories before going to press.

Anyone else remember listening to REO Speedwagon on vinyl, or maybe with one of those newfangled Walkman thingies? In 1981 REO Speedwagon released “You Take it on the Run” which started off with this line: “Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another you’ve been messing around…”

What does this have to do with the law, legal appointments or news outlets? Earlier this week a rumor spread like wildfire through the blawgosphere that Chief Justice John Roberts was about to retire. Numerous outlets ran with the story, first reported by Radar Online.

I’d like to engage you in a small intellecutal exercise. Name three things that would compel John Roberts to allow President Obama name his succesor. I’ll wait.

Still stuck? Ok, name one thing. No? Me either.

Everyone that reported on the story is now frantically posting retractions. We’re happy to say we abstained from the initial feeding frenzy (although my poor liberal heart just about burst with excitement until I thought about it for half a second).

The source of the rumor appears to have been a law school exercise in trusting informants gone horribly, and ironically, wrong. Abovethelaw.com has tracked it down to a 1L class at Georgetown Law where a professor giving a lecture on informants and probable cause started the class by telling his students he had reliable sources that he couldn’t reveal that told him Roberts would be stepping down, and admonished the class not to tell anyone. Within 10 minutes, RadarOnline had the story and ran with it. 30 minutes after making the announcement, the professor retracted it, saying it was a lesson in how an otherwise reliable source could give bad info. Did the professor not realize that his students all had cell phones with text capabilities and laptops tapped into the university network? And how gullible were these students, RadarOnline, and every other blog that ran with the story?

There’s a larger lesson here. We, the information craving public, are equally to blame for stories like this one. Our incessant demand for minute by minute updates has created a media that must publish non stop to satisfy our ravenous desires.

Senate Confirms Joseph Greenaway to 3rd Circuit

joshua — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:05:26 +0000

Joseph Greenaway has become the 15th Obama judicial nominee to win Senate confirmation. His nomination was cleared by the Senate judiciary committee in October, after being nominated last June, but Republican resistance to Obama’s nominees has stalled final confirmation. There have been no objections to Greenaway from either side of the aisle on competence or ideology and it appears that the delay was merely knee jerk opposition to the President.

Greenaway has been described as a centrist and even won praise from Alabama’s Jeff Sessions after Greenaway reaffirmed past comments he made in opposition to judicial activism. He will take the seat vacated by Justice Alito, after Alito’s appointment to the Supreme Court. In the four appeals from Greenaway’s lower court cases that Alito ruled on while sitting on the appellate court, Alito voted to uphold three of them, and Alito took a more liberal line than Greenaway on the fourth.

Greenaway was first appointed to the federal bench in 1996 by President Bill Clinton.

Morning Roundup

joshua — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:20:28 +0000

Good morning everyone! Today is Thursday, November 19 and this is your quick look back at the headlines.

A judge in Louisiana held that the US Army is liable for some Katrina damage…

Google debuts its new case law database….

Winston & Strawn has two new offices in Asia…

David Hamilton is getting his up or down vote for confirmation…

and the ABA is looking for a new leader….

Filibuster on Hamilton is Over

joshua — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:03:52 +0000

The Senate voted on a cloture motion yesterday, ending debate on the appointment of Judge David Hamilton to the 7th Circuit. An up or down confirmation vote will happen in the next day or two, and will likely succeed.

Although Hamilton was President Obama’s first judicial nominee, he has not yet been confirmed and Senator Jeff Sessions (Alabama) tried to lead a filibuster. Sessions himself was nominated to a judicial post in the 80′s and was blocked by a Democrat filibuster. Several Republicans joined the Democrats yesterday to end debate on Hamilton including Saxby Chambliss (Georgia), Susan Collins (Maine), John Cornyn (Texas), Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Richard Lugar (Indiana). Hamilton was originally appointed to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1994.

Gerard Lynch Confirmed for 2nd Circuit Seat

joshua — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:23:22 +0000

Gerard Lynch was confirmed by the Senate today for a seat on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, making him the first appellatejudge appointed by President Obama to win confirmation. Lynch had a relatively easy confirmation, winning Senate approval by a 94-3 vote, but several other nominees are currently being held up by the kind of partisan maneuvering we’ve unfortunately come to expect with judicial nominees.

There are currently 20 vacancies on the appellate level and 72 vacancies for federal district court judges.