3/27/2012

FIVE to four

What is it that the US Supreme Court is supposed to do?  Basically, their job is: to interpret and ensure proper application of the laws written by the legislative branch and enforced by the executive branch.




Republican Justices

Scalia, Antonin 
President Reagan named him to the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and four years later he was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, taking the seat vacated when William Rehnquist ascended to the position of chief justice. An outspoken conservative, Scalia is a prominent proponent of “textualism,” the idea that one should focus on the text of the U.S. constitution or a law and its original meaning when seeking to interpret it.

Kennedy, Anthony McLeod
In 1988, after the highly contested and unsuccessful nominations of Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg, President Reagan nominated Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing Lewis F. Powell. On the court, Kennedy has demonstrated a fairly conservative voting pattern, but by the mid-1990s he had come to be regarded as part of a centrist bloc.

Thomas, Clarence
In July, 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the Supreme Court, to replace Thurgood Marshall. In Oct., 1991, when approval was all but assured, the Senate Judiciary Committee reopened confirmation hearings to examine charges by Anita Hill, a Univ. of Oklahoma law professor, that Thomas had subjected her to sexual harassment while she was an EEOC employee in the 1980s.

Alito, Samuel Anthony, Jr.
He was appointed in 1990 to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, where his opinions were solidly but thoughtfully conservative and generally respectful of precedent. Alito was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 by President George W. Bush.

Roberts, John Glover, Jr.
His nominations to the U.S. court of appeals by President Bush in 1992 and President George W. Bush in 2001 were not voted on, but he was renominated in 2003 and confirmed. In 2005 he was nominated by President G. W. Bush to the Supreme Court and, after Rehnquist's death several months later, was then named and confirmed as chief justice. Intelligent with a sharp legal mind, Roberts was an advocate of conservative positions.


Democratic Justices

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor) and the first Jewish female justice.  She is generally viewed as belonging to the liberal wing of the Court.  Much of the impressive legal career that earned Ginsburg's appointment to the Court involved sex discrimination cases.

Stephen Breyer
President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the bench in 1980, as Judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, becoming its Chief Judge in 1990. President Bill Clinton appointed Breyer to the Supreme Court in 1994. Considered by many to be an intellectual counterweight to Justice Antonin Scalia, Breyer's nomination was hailed by moderate Democrats and Republicans.

Sonia Sotomayor 
President Bill Clinton nominated her for the U.S. Court of Appeals in June of 1997, but she was not confirmed until October of the following year. Her years on the bench have not been particularly controversial or newsworthy, but Sotomayor is considered left-of-center by Republican critics and faced accusations of racism at her confirmation hearings in July of 2009.

Elena Kagan 
Elena Kagan became the 112th person to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice when she took office in 2010. Kagan had been nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama on 10 May 2010, after the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens.

From The Telegraph on Monday, March 26, 2012:

"They are six men and three women, aged between 51 and 79, and two of them have been in the same job since Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

They and their predecessors have handed down decisions that have changed the course of US history, from rulings on slavery to judgements on the Florida ballot recount which confirmed George W Bush's victory in the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Now President Barack Obama's political legacy is in the hands of the nine justices sitting on the US Supreme Court as it begins to consider, tomorrow, the legality of his health care reforms."

No comments: