In The News

Rasmussen just came out with a poll showing that a plurality of voters think the courts are too liberal — 38 percent, compared to 18 percent who think they are too conservative. So for all the harping on Citizens United and the distortion of Ledbetter and other recent Supreme Court cases, the voters aren’t convinced.

Sen. Harry Reid's support for President Obama's Supreme Court nominees has cost him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in his re-election bid.

The NRA is a force in rural states like Nevada where many voters own guns and hunt. The absence of the NRA's blessing represents a setback that Reid's campaign was quick to address Friday by noting that NRA executive Wayne LaPierre once called him a "true champion of the Second Amendment."

Sen. Scott Brown just announced on the Senate floor that he will vote against the confirmation of Obama nominee Elena Kagan for a seat on the Supreme Court. This shows real bravery on his part, as he is sure to face criticism from the Massachusetts press, particularly as Kagan hails most recently from Massachusetts and still has strong support there.

Those of us on that lean to the right are used to disappointment when it comes to the judiciary, but we’ve always taken pessimistic comfort in the belief that it couldn’t get much worse. Well, we were wrong.

As Ed already mentioned, the conservative guess is that 35 senators will vote against Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. If that guess is right, only one Democratic Supreme Court nominee will have received more “no” votes — Wheeler Hazard Peckham, who was rejected by a margin of 41–32 in 1894.

That remarkable level of Senate opposition reflects the public’s ambivalence about her nomination. The latest Gallup survey found that only 46 percent of Americans want to see the Senate confirm Kagan. According to Gallup,

WASHINGTON, D.C. --- The Judicial Crisis Network today released the video “Closing Arguments,” a summation of the case against Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan - much of it in her own words.   The Closing Arguments video distributed to millions of activists nationwide is part of an online ad campaign in swing states and the latest addition to JCN’s ongoing grassroots operation to ensure the confirmation to the judiciary of only highly qualified individuals committed to the Constitution and the Founders’ vision of a nation of limited government.

All of a sudden, in the midst of the Kagan confirmation battle, the Left has exploded in outrage about the pace of judicial confirmations for the circuit and district courts. In the L. A. Times, David Savage has compared the Senate fight over judges to a “family feud,” noting that the president has managed to fill only 36 of the 134 judicial vacancies that have opened during his term.

Here’s an update on a few state-court-related issues the Judicial Crisis Network is tracking.

Indiana: On Friday, a state panel selected three nominees to fill a vacancy on the Indiana Supreme Court: Marion Superior Court Judge Robyn Moberly, Boone Circuit Judge Steven David, and Indianapolis attorney Karl Mulvaney. Under the terms of Indiana’s version of the Missouri Plan, Gov. Mitch Daniels now has 60 days to decide which nominee to appoint. As Prof. Gerald Bradley, John Drake, and Paul Herald explain in this op-ed:

This recent editorial in the Des Moines Register is harshly critical of Senator Grassley’s decision to vote against Elena Kagan. The problem is that the Register’s criticism is based on a mischaracterization of Senator Grassley’s actual comments.

They claim that Grassley was motivated almost entirely by a decision to pay back Democrats for their opposition to Republican nominees. In fact, Grassley’s statement before the Judiciary Committee didn’t mention Democratic action on Republican nominees even once.

Ed Whelan and Matthew Frank have already criticized yesterday’s New York Times piece by Adam Liptak, particularly its acceptance of a political-science study that used the crude technique of gauging the conservative/liberal bent of the Supreme Court by coding decisions based on their outcome in “political” terms. The study is certainly full of politics, but science? Not so much.