IndyLaw Net is an independent weblog written and managed by students and alumni of the Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis, serving the IU Law-Indy community.

We welcome and encourage comments... Please check out ILN's commenting policy

Editor-in-chief, webmaster:
Lucas Sayre

Associate editors:
Karl Born

Contributors:
Karl Born
Brian Deiwert
Lucas Sayre
Kelly Scanlan
Nathan Van Sell

Links:

IU-Indy Law
Prof. Jeff Cooper
Daily Contentions
In the Agora
Commentary Track
Justin Gifford
Jelly Beans & Corduroy
Joe Delamater
Just Playin'
Obiter Dictum
Ryan Strup
The Sleepy Sage
Waiting for the Punchline
Myron's Mind
TV Law
Radio-N8

Other Law Students
IrishLaw
The Rattler
Ambivalent Imbroglio
John Branch
Phil Carter
De Novo
Paul Gutman
Kathryn Janeway
Jewish Buddha
The Kitchen Cabinet
Law Dork
letters from babylon
Letters of Marque
Mixtape Marathon
Notes from the Underground
Andrew Raff
Sua Sponte
Three Years of Hell
Unlearned Hand
Waddling Thunder

Legal Academics
Jack Balkin
Jeff Cooper
Rick Hasen
LawMeme
Lawrence Lessig
Eric Muller
Glenn Reynolds
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
The Volokh Conspiracy
David Wagner
Tung Yin
White Collar Crime prof blog

Other Academic-types
Andrew R. Cline
Crooked Timber
Brad DeLong
Daniel W. Drezner
Joseph Duemer
Amitai Etzioni
Rebecca Goetz
Kieran Healy
Mark A. R. Kleiman
Brett Marston
History News Network
Michael Tinkler

Other Lawblogs
Program for Judicial Awareness
Howard J. Bashman
Stuart Buck
Janell Grenier
Sam Heldman
Tech Law Advisor
Denise Howell
Ken Lammers
Legal Reader
Math Class for Poets
Nathan Newman
Statutory Construction Zone
Indiana Law Blog
Timothy Sandefur
Fritz Schranck
Stop the Bleating
TalkLeft
Pejman Yousefzadeh

Legal News
The Jurist
CNN - Law
FindLaw
Law.com
lexisONE

Sapere aude - dare to be wise
Monday, January 30, 2006
A victory!
Posted 5:02 PM by Luke
In my recent posts on the confirmation process of Samuel Alito, I have remained relatively silent in giving my own opinion on the matter. Now, with a successful cloture vote just having been recorded, the path is clear for a simple majority to confirm Alito tomorrow morning.

And I have no qualms declaring this a victory, not just for Republicans, but for all Americans. It is a victory because the process worked, and the growing politicization of the court succumbed to reason and a fair treatment of a fair nominee.

The vote to end debate (and avoid a filibuster) was 72-25, with over a third of the Democrats voting to give Alito an up-or-down vote tomorrow morning. Several of these same Democrats will probably vote against Alito in the actual confirmation vote, showing that they understand the gravity of using the filibuster tactic. They may disagree with some or much of Alito's ideology, but they also realize that the filibuster should only be used in truly extreme situations. Built into this realization is the notion that Supreme Court justices are to exercise an independent mind and they are not a rubber stamp of those who nominate and confirm them.

Additionally, once confirmed, if Alito sticks to a textual mode of Constitutional interpretation as expected, his presence on the Court should serve to further depoliticize it. I'll let Justice Scalia explain (from his dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey):
In truth, I am as distressed as the Court is -- and expressed my distress several years ago, see Webster, 492 U.S. at 535 -- about the "political pressure" directed to the Court: the marches, the mail, the protests aimed at inducing us to change our opinions. How upsetting it is, that so many of our citizens (good people, not lawless ones, on both sides of this abortion issue, and on various sides of other issues as well) think that we Justices should properly take into account their views, as though we were engaged not in ascertaining an objective law but in determining some kind of social consensus. The Court would profit, I think, from giving less attention to the fact of this distressing phenomenon, and more attention to the cause of it. That cause permeates today's opinion: a new mode of constitutional adjudication that relies not upon text and traditional practice to determine the law, but upon what the Court calls "reasoned judgment," ante, 505 U.S. at 849, which turns out to be nothing but philosophical predilection and moral intuition. [emphasis added]


It is my upmost hope that when the tables are turned -- when Republicans finds themselves in the minority with a Democratic president -- that they show a similar respect to the confirmation process as these brave cloture-voting Democrats have shown.


[Tomorrow I'll have a post discussing the impact that Alito could have on the Court's jurisprudence]

As seen in the
National Jurist
and on
FOXNews

Indianapolis Help Wanted




Archives:
August 2003
September 2003
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
April 2007
May 2007
March 2010






Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com