Justice Ginsberg Way-off on Roe v. Wade

Update: Erwin Chemerinsky writes "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should retire from the Supreme Court after the completion of the current term in June. She turned 81 on Saturday and by all accounts she is healthy and physically and mentally able to continue. But only by resigning this summer can she ensure that a Democratic president will be able to choose a successor who shares her views and values." (LA Times)

Diane P. Wood, Margaret Raymond, and so many brilliant, young jurists are ready that Ginsberg's obviously outstanding tenure aside, not stepping down is selfish in the face of American misogyny and the brand of authoritarianism that is arising now from underground into the judiciary.
---Time for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to get off the Court

What ahistorical spasms have taken ahold of Justice Ginsberg?

"Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993-present) told an audience at the University of Chicago Law School on Saturday night that a lack of 'judicial restraint' in the court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade gave abortion opponents a 'clear target' that continues to fuel anti-choice activism 40 years later," notes Katie McDonough this morning in Salon.

A clear target?

Women have been the clear target of the Catholic Church hierarchy and free roaming misogyny since the inception of the United States of America.

Roe stopped the enforcement of anti-choice state laws outlawing abortion.

Salon's McDonough also references similar comments that Ginsberg made in April:

As noted by the New York Times editorial board and Yale Law School professors Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel, Ginsburg’s previously-asserted idea that the court got 'ahead of public opinion' on abortion and 'short-circuited' an evolving political process at the state level is deeply problematic.

If one follows Ginsberg's logic, the Court should never protect the constitutional rights of minorities in the face of majority opinion because that would make political targets of minorities by assorted majority bigots and oppressive, tyrannical law of which America has a long, shameful tradition.

Ginsberg goes on pursuing several lines of thought, all of which do not demonstrate a clear hold of any conception of the civil rights of Americans, and certainly not specifically the constitutional imperative to protect free choice, an issue that props up the GOP and Tea Party as major political forces.

Ginsberg's public forays into political strategy are ill-conceived and foolish for a sitting justice of the Court, and her constitutional jurisprudence is suspect.

Ginsberg is 80-year-old.

And she is no William O. Douglas or Robert Jackson. Ginsberg should resign at the end of term in June.

The stakes are way too high with this reckless, statist Roberts-Scalia court and the forces of authoritarianism that hold sway in the majority of states.

Diane Wood for SC Already Under Attack

The National Review (NRO) hates that Diane Wood acclaimed the humanity of gays in questioning the Christan Legal Society, an anti-abortion and anti gay outfit, during oral arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Walker, No. 05-3239.

Wood, a justice on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh District is considered a leading candidate for Justice Souter's seat.

Bigotry and discrimination are not "about hatred, it is about love. To tell something, somebody something that's wrong is right is not loving, and that's what this chapter would be doing," said the CLC attorney. The NRO's Ed Whelan writes this exchange shows Wood "displayed a hostility to orthodox Christian beliefs."

Trying to fire up the religious right just maybe.

This nomination fight is going to be more fun than I thought, and I thought it was going to be a lot fun!

The NYT has a profile on Diane P. Wood who is drawing attention as a leading candidate to fill Justice Souter's expected vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wood famously (in Wisconsin) voiced disgust towards Stephen Biskupic, former U.S. Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, who launched several political prosecutions during his tenure with the Bush administration's Department of Justice, including the political prosecution of an innocent woman, Georgia Thompson, and GOP-inspired voter fraud prosecutions.

"It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin; I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is,” said Wood to Biskupic.

Of the GOP voter fraud obsession, the New York Times reported Wood saying of a Biskupic prosecution (many of which were overturned): "I find this whole prosecution mysterious. I don't know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times."

Reads the NYT profile

WASHINGTON — When President Bill Clinton had a rare opportunity in 1995 for a Democratic president to fill a vacancy on the federal appeals court based in Chicago, a bastion of conservative thinking, he received an unusually strong recommendation from Senator Paul Simon.

Mr. Simon, an outspoken liberal from Illinois who died in 2003, told the president the new judge should be a reliable progressive who would be cerebral enough to go up against the court’s two formidable conservatives, Judges Richard A. Posner and Frank H. Easterbrook. He said it should be Prof. Diane P. Wood of the University of Chicago law school.

"Beyond Thin" Judge Draws Notice for a SC Vacancy

Justice Diane P. Wood is drawing attention as a leading candidate to fill the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wood is famous in some circles (especially in Wisconsin) for her judicial equivalent of voiced disgust shown towards Stephen Biskupic, former U.S. Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, who launched several political prosecutions during his tenure with the Bush administration's Department of Justice, including the repulsive political prosecution of an innocent woman, Georgia Thompson.

Wood was nominated to serve as an appellate judge by President Clinton and confirmed in 1995.

As Mark Pitsch notes in a State Journal piece in 2007 [largely an it's-not-what-Biskupic-did-that-really-matters piece]:

Georgia Thompson, a state purchasing agent for Doyle's Department of Administration, was indicted in January 2006 and convicted six months later in the midst of a heated gubernatorial election.

She spent four months in prison before the federal appeals panel reversed the conviction and ordered her immediately set free - with one judge saying the evidence was 'beyond thin.'

The same judge, Diane P. Wood of the 7th U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, also had harsh words when the panel rejected a 2005 voter fraud conviction won by Biskupic's office against a woman who voted despite having a felony record, The New York Times reported.

'I find this whole prosecution mysterious,' Wood said. 'I don't know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times.'

Biskupic said he hasn't prosecuted for political reasons.

The evidence for the conclusion that Biskupic was an apolitical US atty is beyond thin, and Wood was not shy about pointing out the many deficiencies in Biskupic's prosecutions.

Wood's name has been mentioned in numerous news reports on President Obama's likely leaning toward appointing a woman to the court, and Wood came up again today in a piece in the Washington Post by Carrie Johnson:

At the White House, advisers already had begun drafting a short list for the court in case one of the several aging justices decided to retire this summer. Speculation has been that the list includes Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, who has been nominated to serve as solicitor general; Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit; Judge Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit; and Stanford University law professor Kathleen M. Sullivan.

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via mal contends