Edward Whelan is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a prominent conservative legal commentator. He contributed articles to The Weekly Standard between 2006 and 2014, focusing on judicial nominations, constitutional law, and the federal courts. A former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, he is widely known for his commentary on legal and Supreme Court issues.
With little fanfare, President Obama has enjoyed remarkable success in his project to remake the federal courts in his own ideological image. How much more he achieves during his final two years in office depends in large part on whether Republicans win control of the Senate this November.
Last month, just 12 days after taking office as Virginia’s attorney general, Mark Herring abandoned his state’s defense of its marriage laws in a federal lawsuit brought by same-sex couples. Switching sides to join forces with the same-sex couples, Herring explained that he had concluded that the…
The recent district court ruling that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law governing homosexuals in the military is unconstitutional triggered speculation that the Obama administration, which is eager for Congress to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” might choose not to appeal the ruling. That speculation…
Justice John Paul Stevens turns 88 in April, and by January 2009 five other justices will be from 69 to 75 years old. If Barack Obama is elected president, he will probably--with the benefit of resignations by liberal justices eager for him to be the president who chooses their successors--have the…
Confirmation Wars
The Myth of
CAPTURED for the past two decades by the left, the American Bar Association leverages its clout as a professional services group for lawyers in support of an array of liberal causes. Its special task force on presidential signing statements--which last week accused President Bush of undermining the…
IF THERE WERE A LIST of lawyers least suited to assess Brett Kavanaugh's fitness to serve as a judge on the D.C. Circuit, Marna Tucker would be very high on it. Tucker's narrow specialty, divorce law, is far removed, in both substance and sophistication, from the work of the federal appellate…
PRESIDENT BUSH RECENTLY NOMINATED MILAN D. Smith Jr. to fill a longstanding vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit, which covers nine western states, is a notorious bastion of liberal judicial lawlessness. So the White House should be looking to fill the…