Courts

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7/8/2021
  

  How Democrats Lost the Courts

  "Some Democrats are starting to suspect that the story is simpler: They’ve been chumps. They have clung to norms Republicans long ago abandoned. They have championed moderates in order to appeal to their enemies, only to watch those moderates twist in the wind."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/18/19
  

  Poor criminal defendants need better legal counsel to achieve a just society

  by Connie Hassett-Walker

  Why we must fulfill the promise of a famous Supreme Court decision to truly achieve criminal justice reform.

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/6/19
  

  Silencing Black Women in the White Courtroom

  by Denise Lynn

  Ruby McCollum’s case is part of the long history of the carceral state’s heavy-handed and unjust policing of Black women.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  12-5-17
  

  Would Trump Consider a Court-Packing Scheme?

  by Jeff Shesol

  McConnell’s strategy of shutting down the judicial-appointments process during Barack Obama’s last two years in office gave Trump, at the time of his Inauguration, a hundred and three vacancies to fill—more than twice as many as Obama had in 2009.

• 
• SOURCE: Social Science Research Network "The Politics of Early Justice, Lower Court Federal Judicial Selection 1789-1861"
  11-4-14
  

  New study: Judicial nominations have always been subject to partisanship

  by Michael J. Gerhardt and Michael Ashley Stein

  There never was a Golden Age.  These nominations were always political.

• SOURCE: National Review
  7-9-13
  

  Victor Davis Hanson: Revolutionary Tribunals

  NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is The Savior Generals, published this spring by Bloomsbury Books. In ancient Athens, popular courts of paid jurors helped institutionalize fairness. If a troublemaker like Socrates was thought to be a danger to the popular will, then he was put on trial for inane charges like “corrupting the youth” or “introducing new gods.”Convicting gadflies would remind all Athenians of the dangers of questioning democratic majority sentiment. If Athenian families were angry that their sons had supposedly died unnecessarily in battle, then they might charge the generals with capital negligence — a warning to all commanders to watch their backs. As in the case of Socrates, a majority vote often led to conviction, and conviction to a death sentence, or at least ostracism or exile. The popular courts freelanced to ensure that “the people” would hold sway over the perceived powerful and elite.