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Judiciary Snippets

A new biography of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says has been interviewed by White House lawyers as a possible choice to be the

next Chief Justice of the United States.

Read

John Ashcroft, GW's choice for Attorney General, is a self-styled moral crusader as strongly against abortion as he is enthusiastic

about the death penalty. He lost his Senate seat in the

2000 election to an opponent who died during the campaign.

Last year, Ashcroft received an honorary degree from Bob Jones University and is closely aligned with the Christian Coalition and Pat Robertson.

Ashcroft is also an outspoken fan of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

He is known among lobbyists as an advocate for drug companies and the automotive industry and for preventing consumers from suing HMO's.

Clarence Thomas (Supreme Court Justice) lied under oath and before the American public

when he denied Anita Hill's sexual harassment charges and attempted to portray her as delusional and infatuated with him.

He also lied when he claimed he had no position on abortion rights and Roe v. Wade;

since his appointment to the Court, he has voted consistently against all abortion rights.

George Will (TV Pundit and Syndicated Columnist) lied to the nation in 1980 when he briefed Ronald Reagan prior to a televised debate with

Jimmy Carter, and then claimed to be an "objective" reporter when he covered the same debate on TV. Will, who is a vicious critic of moral

relativity, committed adultery against his first wife, Madeleine; when she found out, she dumped his clothing in a pile in the driveway with

a sign saying "Take it somewhere else, buster." Will's divorce lefthis wife with their Downs syndrome daughter.

Links

The Republican Wife-Cheating Hall of Fame

George Bush (President 1989-1992; Vice President 1981-1988; CIA Director; Member of Congress; Oil Executive)

lied

during the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair

when he denied approving the illegal plan at a top-level meeting with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz.

He obstructed justice when he pardoned Weinberger , Poindexter, and others for their crimes committed in

Iran-Contra, which blocked the Independent Counsel's investigation and prevented a full investigation of his own role in the affair.

He also lied when he called Clarence Thomas the "most qualified" candidate for nomination to the Supreme Court, and

obstructed justice when he appointed him to serve despite Thomas' record as a sexual harasser and his absolute opposition to abortion

rights and civil rights for women and minorities.

Finally, rumors about Bush's own "Jennifer" have never been laid to rest.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Broward County election officials decided to send a second batch of absentee ballots Thursday

after a snafu kept them from reaching their intended destinations.

Justice Thomas defends court's action on recount

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said

Thursday he would prefer not to face another election-related lawsuit, but defended the high court's decision to get involved in the contentious dispute over the

2000 presidential vote in Florida.

Clarence Thomas

Supreme Court Justice

Farrell33ExtremeReasonsToBootBush.html

3. John Ashcroft: A former member of the Council for National Policy,

John Aschroft was initially considered an extreme choice for Attorney General, but the folks at Prophecy Central rallied behind him,

as did Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who reportedly anointed the America's Attorney General with cooking oil, in the manner of King David. []

But the Patriot Act codicil destroys that check and balance.

The codicil was slipped in to the reauthorization legislation by an aide to Republican senator Arlen Specter, in a procedure so hush-hush that

even Specter claims he didn't know it had been done. (Specter supports a bill to reverse the procedure.)

The staffer, Michael O'Neill, is a law professor at George Mason University, and once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

O'Neill, according to the right-wing Washington Times, was appointed as the Senate Judiciary Committee's chief counsel so that

Specter, a moderate Republican viewed with deep distrust by party conservatives, could reassure them of his loyalty to the Bush White House.

"Right-wing distrust had almost ousted the Pennsylvania moderate from the Judiciary chairmanship, and appointing O'Neill

was apparently the price for keeping that post," Conason observes.

"Evidently O'Neill rewarded Specter by sneaking through legislation to deprive him and his fellow senators of one of their most important powers,

at the behest of an attorney general intent on aggrandizing executive power. The results of this backstage betrayal --

Its ninth Annual Lawyers Convention attracted more than 500 attorneys to discuss "Group Rights, Victim Status, and the Law,"

with such speakers as

American Enterprise Fellow Dinesh D'Souza,

Weekly Standard editor William Kristol,

neo-conservative Glenn Loury,

former Attorney General (and current fellow at the Heritage Foundation) Edwin Meese, and

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

-NCRP,

The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations

Grants

Grants to the Federalist Society.

===== Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies =====

The Conservative Cabal That's Transforming American Law

With the election of George W. Bush,

members of the Federalist Society, a national fraternity of conservative lawyers,

are queuing up for jobs in the federal government they purport to denigrate --

especially sensitive posts in the White House and the Justice Department.

Federalists gained a foothold there in the years of Reagan

===== The Conservative Cabal That's Transforming American Law =====

Let's consider a case that only involves sex indirectly:

When the legal barriers to racially mixed marriages came down in some states,

did the fact that two people of two different races married each other harm the institution of marriage in any way?

Can anyone really make a convincing argument that Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's marriage to a Caucasian weakens the institution of marriage?

Unfortunately there are probably some people in America who would

argue that racially mixed marriages are prohibited by some verse in the Bible and would be

willing to hang mixed marriage couples-even today.

But surely no sensible person would argue that his or her marriage is denigrated because of Justice Thomas's marriage.

===== General Pace's Remarks Ignite National Debate on Gays in Military -- Towleroad for modern gay men, =====

Posted by: DowntownLA | Mar 14, 2007 6:04:34 PM

Alan Simpson was instrumental in Clarence Thomas becoming a Supreme Court Justice (with life tenure) at a relatively young age.

When I place in the balance the damage

Thomas has done and will continue to do on the Supreme Court alongside Simpson's supportive "op-ed piece" guess which way the balance tips?

Its nice that the old codger has a libertarian streak, you know, in the Wyoming tradition, but

his terrible legacy as a Senator far outweighs an op-ed piece, however nicely written.

As for Brownback, I think his public support for Gen. Pace's remarks reflects his efforts to make gay rights a prominent issue in the presidential election. In

2004, the antigay vote reelected Bush.

I think Brownback wants that vote.

Posted by: John | Mar 14, 2007 6:06:02 PM

Senator Sam Brownback... What an asshole! It never ceases to disaponit me how so close minded and ignorant people can be!

How is it that people like this can't see that what they are spreading is wrong?

To a degree i feel that this has to do with religious conditioning.

it is hard to find a religious person who can think freely without clinging to a musty old book written by ignorant farmers.

it has been my experience that more hate and death has come about because of religious beliefs than not.

George Bush October 15th, 1991 Statement on the Confirmation of Clarence Thomas as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

George Bush October 16th, 1991 Exchange With Reporters on the Confirmation of Clarence Thomas as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

George Bush August 7th, 1991 Statement by Press Secretary Fitzwater on the Nomination of Clarence Thomas To Be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court States.

At the time of publication Brownfeld was associate editor of the right-wing Accuracy in Media's AIM Report and associate editor of the The Lincoln Review,

published by the conservative Lincoln Institute for Education & Research.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas served on the editorial advisory board of the The Lincoln Review.

===== The Public Eye : Website of Political Research Associates =====

The Hunt for Red Menace: - 12

Clint Bolick

Vice President and Director of Litigation.

Clint Bolick worked as an assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was EEOC chairman.

While working for the Landmark Legal Foundation,

Bolick led the defense for the first Wisconsin school voucher program.

00.000.1988-00.000.1992 - - the Kansas City, MO-based Landmark Legal Foundation received 10 grants from the Bradley Foundation totaling $592,700. 6 ]

When Wisconsin expanded its voucher program to include religious schools - the first state in the country to do so - Bolick defended the plan in court.

While the State of Wisconsin officially defended the program, it was the Bradley Foundation that provided funding for

the attorneys, who besides Bolick included the "independent" counsel Kenneth Starr. 2

Starr, who made his living defending big auto and tobacco companies from consumer litigation, had also previously done work for Bradley.

Until Bolick began presenting himself as a defender of low-income African American schoolchildren,

he had been most closely associated with attacks on affirmative action.

He is the author of "The Affirmative Action Fraud: Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision?" published by the Cato Institute. 2

It was Bolick who drafted a bill that would end all affirmative action programs on the federal level. 2

And he had high praise for the landmark Hopwood vs. Texas decision, calling it "clearly another nail in the coffin of racial preferences." 2

[See "Affirmative Action", below.]

Bolick, who is white, has a particular interest in the issue of race.

In fact, The New York Times described him as

"the maestro of the political right on issues of race... increasingly setting the tone and defining the terms of the national debate."

He achieved some national notoriety from his pivotal role in the right-wing attack on

Lani Guinier, President Clinton's nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Guinier, a former lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,

had written on the issue of proportional representation (defining an electoral district by race and not solely by geography),

arguing it was a reasonable means of ensuring that state legislatures and judges' benches were not completely white.

Bolick wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal attacking Guinier as "Clinton's Quota Queen."

This obvious attempt to conjure up the racist stereotype of a "welfare queen" set the tone for the opposition.

Bolick also teamed up with the Bradley-funded Free Congress Foundation to orchestrate anti-Guinier attacks.

Clinton withdrew the nomination, and today proportional representation has suffered severe judicial setbacks.

Bolick's attacks are aimed at a wide range of targets.

In testimony before the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. Congress, Subcommittee on the Constitution,

July 17, 1998, Bolick criticized attempts by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to challenge employment discrimination in police and fire departments,

to ensure bi-lingual education for Indian and Spanish-speaking students, as well as proportional representation.

Other Institute staff members

Among the other Strauss disciples who are

currently part of the ongoing neo-con insurgency are:

John Podhoretz,

editorial page editor of Murdoch's yellow tabloid, the New York Post, former

editor of The Weekly Standard, and offspring of first generation neo-cons

Norman Podhoretz and

Midge Decter;

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas;

Attorney General John Ashcroft;

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff and

chief national security advisor to Vice President Cheney, who

was introduced to the world of

Leo Strauss

by his own

Yale University professor and mentor,

Paul Wolfowitz;

Pentagon disinformation officer

Abram Shulsky;

Gary Schmitt,

executive director of the

Kristol-led Project for the New American Century (PNAC);

David Brook, another editor of The Weekly Standard;

Werner Dannhauser,

a protégé of Strauss, who left academia to assume the editorship of the flagship neo-con magazine Commentary

following the retirement of

Norman Podhoretz; and

Robert Kagan, also of The Weekly Standard, and the

son of leading Yale University Straussian Donald Kagan.

YES: I meant Oprah. - 1:03:05 PM

CONDI: It's hard to know what her actual foreign policy instincts will be once she comes out from under the pincer movement of Powell, Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Will her Scowcroftian background re-emerge? Idoubt it.

If Rumsfeld leaves, we might get a better idea. But my guess is that he won't.

Now that Powell has gone, Rummy will see it as a matter of cojones that he stay for a while, if only to prevent

sufficient manpower being deployed to win the war in Iraq, and to let memories of Abu Ghraib fade. (Sorry, Rummy, but mine won't.)

So: no change with the appearance of real change.

In fact, the likelihood of any new tack in foreign affairs just collapsed. But

the real genius of the Rice appointment is domestic.

She will become the second mostpowerful African-American woman in America. And

she will become that as a Republican icon.

That has to have an impact on the way at least a small minority of black voters will view Bush (and not a few other minority voters). Add in

Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Chief Justice, and

you have a diversity record in top appointments that puts every previous Democrat to shame.

That's partly what Bush is doing.

He won't admit it, of course. But then it only works if he doesn't.- 12:13:13 AM

The fourth amendment states that,

"the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."

It also notes that warrants shall only be issued once authorities have established "probable cause" and

described the people, places, and things to be searched and seized.

In a 1995 Supreme Court opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas stressed that

the "knock and announce" rule that Hudson's case rests upon protects the dignity of residents by

allowing them a reasonable time to make themselves presentable before the police enter.

The rule also protects private property by allowing residents to open doors, rather than having them destroyed by a police battering ram,

Thomas said, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),

who filed an amicus brief in the case last September.

Hudson wants the Supreme Court to reverse the Michigan court's ruling,

which embraced the argument that had the search been conducted legally, the evidence against him would have been found anyway.

Under this reasoning, Hudson's lawyers say,

police would have no incentive to avoid unconstitutional shortcuts--like failing to get a warrant or simply barging into homes--when looking for evidence.

Moran and other lawyers representing Hudson say

they are hopeful that the Supreme Court will decide the case in their favor by ordering the suppression of evidence against their client.

LINK

Investigation:

NEOCONS WHO ARE POISONING US CITIZENS.

Donald Rumsfeld was the CEO at Searle when aspartame was created. Rumsfeld spent 17 yrs trying to get aspartame approved by the FDA but

failed, due to its toxic compounds.

The day after Reagan was sworn in, the FDA was forced to retract its findings from govt studies on asparatame and the drug was rename, "Nutrasweet".

Disposition:

Lawsuits against Monsanto for ASPARTAME, a neurotoxin and carcinogenic. Used in 5000 food products.

Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas and John Ashcroft were Monsantos attorneys who strong armed the FDA into silence.

>>> Beverly LaHaye <<< > From SourceWatch <

Beverly LaHaye (www.buildingequality.us/ifas/cnp/index.html ),

in 1998, was "Founder and past president, Concerned Women for America,

purpose is to preserve, protect, and promote traditional and Judeo- Christian values through education, legislative programs, and community involvement;

author, The Desires of a Woman's Heart, A Woman By God's Design, and six other books; co-authored, Spirit Controlled Family Living and The Act of Marriage; hosts nationally syndicated,

daily talk radio program,

Beverly LaHaye

Live; appeared on numerous television talk shows and news programs;

testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of Justice Antonin Scalia's,

Judge Robert Bork's, and Justice Clarence Thomas' nominations to the Supreme Court;

awarded honorary doctorate of humanities, Liberty University,

1992; co-speaker, Family Life Seminars, for 17 years;

conducted over 350 seminars with her husband Tim LaHaye."

Souter

(supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/justices/souter.bio.html )[7] (www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0846021.html ):

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States, 1990.

Clarence Thomas (supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/justices/thomas.bio.html )[8] (www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0848509.html ):

Nominated by

President George Herbert Walker Bush as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court:

took oath of office October 23, 1991.

August 02, 2006 at 08:00 AM in Newspapers

> Kennedy op-ed gets correction <

[Washpost_81]

A July 30 Outlook article by

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)

incorrectly used the word "accept" rather than "respect"

in quoting from a dissenting opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

The opinion referred to the court's "well-established duty to respect the Executive's judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs."

Link

WASHINGTON BUZZ ON HIGH COURT VACANCIES AND SELECTIONS:

ON DEEP BACKGROUND ONLY!

FindLaw columnist and former counsel to the President

John W. Dean

discusses Washington Supreme Court watchers' speculations as to who will be the next Supreme Court Justice, and Chief Justice.

Dean offers

predictions regarding Chief Justice Rehnquist,

revisionism regarding Justice Clarence Thomas,

pessimism regarding the chances of former Texas Supreme Court Justice Alberto Gonzales,

and a few possible surprise candidates taken from Congress, not the judiciary.

Friday, Apr. 26, 2002

Los Angeles Times Editorial On The Oliverio Martinez Case

Justice Takes a Beating In The Los Angeles Times.

This is the full text of the article. It's all too important to leave any out.

While Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas labored to justify the bullying interrogation of a farm worker

whom an Oxnard police officer had just gravely wounded,

Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting,

called the inquisition what it was:

"the functional equivalent" of torture.

Thomas' 6-3 majority opinion

Tuesday rolls back decades of constitutional protections against self-incrimination and

all but invites the backroom rough-'em-up police tactics of old.

The farm worker, Oliverio Martinez,

is blind and partly paralyzed

from the five bullets

that police pumped into his body

after they stopped him in connection with an investigation of possible drug sales in his Oxnard neighborhood.

Although Martinez initially complied with orders to dismount from his bicycle,

a scuffle resulted when the officers discovered he was carrying a knife and Martinez was shot.

Paramedics arrived and carted away Martinez, bleeding and screaming, to a hospital.

For nearly an hour, as Martinez waited for medical treatment and then as doctors tended him,

the officers pressured him to confess to starting the fight.

"I am dying!" Martinez cried.

"OK, yes, you are dying," the officer said.

"But tell me why you are fighting with the police."

Not once did the police officers inform Martinez of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present.

Instead,

to try to badger him into a confession,

they took advantage of his physical agony and mental anguish and

the fact that he couldn't move from the hospital bed.

In the end,

the officers got nothing useful from Martinez and never charged him with a crime.

Martinez sued,

both for the shooting and for civil damages on the ground that police violated his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and

his due process rights against egregious police conduct.

The shooting lawsuit still stands.

Writing for a splintered majority,

Thomas insisted that where there was no harm of any legal consequence, there was no foul.

"Martinez

was never made to be a 'witness' against himself

in violation of the 5th Amendment's self-incrimination clause

because his statements were never admitted as testimony against him in a criminal case

[T]he mere use of compulsive questioning, without more, [does not] violate the Constitution."

Such a narrow thread of reasoning cuts a wide path to cruelty.

Because Martinez had not been advised of his rights, the court said,

had police charged him based on his nearly incoherent statements,

his disclosures would not have been admissible as evidence anyway.

Three cases before the court next term could push at the boundaries of permissible evidence in criminal cases.

The Martinez case turns back the clock, and the coming cases could multiply the harm to a civilized justice system.

Posted by Lisa at 08:53 PM

Supreme Court Gives Police State Its Blessing

The Supreme Court has ruled that it's okay to beat up suspects without reading them their miranda rights

in order to get statements out of them,

even if those statements will most likely be thrown out later in a court of law.

(Or not get thrown out, of course, considering that such decisions will be made later by individual judges on a case by case basis.)

Clarence Thomas, who wrote the opinion, said that

this is true even in the extreme case of Oliverio Martinez, who was in a hospital, bleeding

to death from police-inflicted bullet wounds during the interrogation in question.

Here's a link to the opinion and concurring and dissenting opinions:

CHAVEZ V. MARTINEZ.

Court Finds Coercive Questioning OK

Justices say defendants or suspects can be compelled to respond to police questioning,

even though the statements may not be used against them in court

By James Gerstenzang for The Los Angeles

The Supreme Court ruled today that coercive questioning of a suspect by police officers -- even a gravely wounded man who has not been

offered his Miranda rights -- does not violate a person's Constitutional rights, as long as the questioning stops short of torture.

The court said defendants have the right not to have statements they make to police used in court against them during trial. But defendants

or suspects can still be compelled to respond to police questioning.

The 6-to-3 decision is likely to have wide ramifications because it could open the door to increased pressure by police officers

interrogating potential defendants...

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that while a person under police questioning has the right not to answer questions

where the answer might be self-incriminating in future criminal proceedings, "that does not alter our conclusion that a violation of

the constitutional right against self-incrimination occurs only if one has been compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal case."

Thomas wrote: "Mere coercion does not violate the text of the self-incrimination clause absent use of the compelled statements in a

criminal case against the witness."

The farm worker, Oliverio Martinez, was questioned in a hospital emergency room after he had been shot five times by police.

He had not been told of his rights to remain silent, or to have a lawyer's assistance, and he has maintained that a police sergeant questioned

him after he said he did not want the questioning to continue.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad: www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la052703scotus_lat,1,4093479.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dheadlines

Court Finds Coercive Questioning OK

By James Gerstenzang

The Los Angeles

Tuesday 27 May 2003

Justices say defendants or suspects can be compelled to respond to police questioning, even though the statements may not be used against them in court

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled today that coercive questioning of a suspect by police officers -- even a gravely wounded man who has

not been offered his Miranda rights -- does not violate a person's Constitutional rights, as long as the questioning stops short of torture.

The court said defendants have the right not to have statements they make to police used in court against them during trial.

But defendants or suspects can still be compelled to respond to police questioning.

The 6-to-3 decision is likely to have wide ramifications because it could open the door to increased pressure by police officers

interrogating potential defendants.

At issue is the extent of the protections provided by the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, the 1966 Miranda decision

guaranteeing a person's right to remain silent in the face of police questioning and the right to obtain a lawyer before being interrogated.

In the decision, however, the high court ruled that suspects have a right to sue if they are tortured during police questioning.

In another Supreme Court case today, the court upheld the rights of state workers under a federal law guaranteeing time off to care for

children or ailing relatives, departing from the court's line of cases that expand state rights at the expense of federal power or laws passed by Congress.

The court, in the decision written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, held that state employees can sue in federal court to

enforce their rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The Mirada ruling decision occurred in the 1997 case of an Oxnard, Calif., farm worker who was arrested and shot multiple times by police

who then questioned him -- despite his protestations -- as he lay gravely wounded.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that while a person under police questioning has the right not to answer questions

where the answer might be self-incriminating in future criminal proceedings, "that does not alter our conclusion that a violation of

the constitutional right against self-incrimination occurs only if one has been compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal case."

Thomas wrote: "Mere coercion does not violate the text of the self-incrimination clause absent use of the compelled statements in a

criminal case against the witness."

The farm worker, Oliverio Martinez, was questioned in a hospital emergency room after he had been shot five times by police. He had not

been told of his rights to remain silent, or to have a lawyer's assistance, and he has maintained that a police sergeant questioned

him after he said he did not want the questioning to continue.

The police supervisor pressed him to explain his version of the events leading to the shooting.

In a transcript of the interview, Martinez is said to have responded:

"I am choking. I am dying, please."

The officer said: "If you are going to die, tell me what happened."

Martinez was not charged with a crime; the violence left him blind and

paralyzed and he sued the police sergeant and the City of Oxnard for,

among other things, coercive questioning.

In its defense, the Oxnard police department asserted that the Miranda

ruling does not include a "constitutional right to be free of coercive

interrogation," but only a right not to have forced confessions used

at trial. The Bush administration sided with the police in the case.

Writing for the minority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the

interrogation was akin to "an attempt to obtain an involuntary

confession from a prisoner by torturous methods."

Posted by Lisa at 08:40 PM

April 18, 2003

NBC News On Supreme Court Affirmative Action Case

Update June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court has handed down it's decision

on this case upholding Affirmative Action.

Here's a clip from an NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw on April 1,

2003.

I've also collected together a bunch of links on that go with these

clips here.

NBC News On Supreme Court Affirmative Action Case (Small - 6 MB)

NBC News On Supreme Court Affirmative Action Case (Hi-res 79 MB)

"At the U.S. Supreme court today, one of the most important civil

rights cases in a generation..." -- Tom Brokaw.

Update June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court has handed down it's decision

on this case upholding Affirmative Action.

Links:

The cases heard by the Supreme Court on April 1 were Gratz v.

Bollinger and

Grutter v. Bollinger (it's two back to back cases).

Audio of the arguments (from CNN):

www.cnn.com/LAW/scotus/gratz.bollinger/argument.smil

www.cnn.com/LAW/scotus/gratz.bollinger/argument2.smil

Briefs (from FindLaw):

Brief for the United States, Gratz v. Bollinger [Jennifer Gratz (U.

Michigan

admissions]:

news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/gratz/gratzum11603brf.pdf

Brief for the United States, Grutter v. Bollinger [(Barbara Grutter

(U.

Michigan School of Law admissions)]:

news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/grutter/grutterum11603brf.pdf

Opinions of the lower courts (from FindLaw):

U.S. District Court Opinion:

news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/grutter/grttrbllngr32701ff.pdf

6th Circuit Opinion:

laws.lp.findlaw.com/6th/02a0170p.html

The case that started it all, Bakke (from FindLaw)

University of California Regents v. Bakke:

laws.findlaw.com/us/438/265.html

NPR says:

"what many observers consider to be the most important civil rights

issue to

come before the high court in a generation ... The cases before the

nine-judge panel were compelling enough that the court took a rare

step by allowing news organizations to record oral arguments streamed live

from the bench ... The main case involves the university's law school. Barbara

Grutter, who is white, applied for admission there in 1996. She was

rejected. She investigated and found out that African Americans and

ethnic minorities who had lower overall admissions scores were admitted.

Grutter

sued, saying she was a victim of illegal discrimination. ... Grutter and her

supporters won the first round in U.S. District Court, but lost in a close

decision in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ... On Tuesday," [That was April 1] "the high court will hear oral arguments on Grutter v. Bollinger

and the related lawsuit, Gratz v. Bollinger, that tests the university's undergraduate affirmative action program ":

www.npr.org/news/specials/michigan/

Posted by Lisa at 03:10 PM