Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice leaves Democratic Party over antisemitism concerns

A Pennsylvania state Supreme Court justice said Monday he is leaving the Democratic Party over what he sees as a rise in antisemitism from mainstream party figures.

Justice David Wecht, who was elected to the court as a Democrat in 2015, said in a statement he is switching his party affiliation to independent due to an “acquiescence to Jew-hatred” becoming “disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.”

“I can no longer abide this. So, I won’t,” Wecht said. “I am no longer registered within any political party.”

Read the rest here.

LA Times: Trump has flipped the 9th Circuit —

...and some new judges are causing a ‘shock wave’

When President Trump ticks off his accomplishments since taking office, he frequently mentions his aggressive makeover of a key sector of the federal judiciary — the circuit courts of appeal, where he has appointed 51 judges to lifetime jobs in three years.

In few places has the effect been felt more powerfully than in the sprawling 9th Circuit, which covers California and eight other states. Because of Trump’s success in filling vacancies, the San Francisco-based circuit, long dominated by Democratic appointees, has suddenly shifted to the right, with an even more pronounced tilt expected in the years ahead.

Trump has now named 10 judges to the 9th Circuit — more than one-third of its active judges — compared with seven appointed by President Obama over eight years.
“Trump has effectively flipped the circuit,” said 9th Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., an appointee of President George W. Bush.

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Judge questions whether Obama administration misled him on immigration policy

BROWNSVILLE - - A federal judge here on Thursday raised the specter of sanctions against the U.S. government on Thursday as he gave a tongue-lashing to lawyers for the Obama administration for misleading him about a new immigration program at the center of a national lawsuit.

"You said it's not happening," U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen said, referring to the program. "And like an idiot I believed that."

In January, Justice Department lawyers had assured Hanen that President Barack Obama's directive to shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation was not being put into effect while a lawsuit filed by 26 states against the administration moved through the courts.

But this month, the U.S. government admitted it granted 108,000 immigrants, who already were protected from deportation, three-year renewals of their deferred status, instead of two years. The three-year deferrals are one aspect of the new program that's under dispute.

In February, Hanen granted the 26 states a preliminary injunction halting the new immigration program, which Obama had put in place through executive action Nov. 20.

Read the rest here.

Episcopal Church is sharply rebuked by court

Apparently there are limits to the amount of bad faith legal maneuvering the courts will put up with.

HT: The Archer of the Forest

Federal Judge Blocks Obama Immigration Order

A federal judge in Texas has ordered a halt, at least temporarily, to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, siding with Texas and 25 other states that filed a lawsuit opposing the initiatives.

In an order filed on Monday, the judge, Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, prohibited the Obama administration from carrying out programs the president announced in November that would offer protection from deportation and work permits to as many as five million undocumented immigrants. The first of those programs was scheduled to start receiving applications on Wednesday.

Read the rest here.

Best news I've had in weeks.

California Bans Judges From Boy Scouts

California judges will no longer be allowed to participate in the Boy Scouts organization after the state Supreme Court voted this week to eliminate an exception to a rule that bars jurists from being a part of discriminatory organizations.

The Boy Scouts of America continues to bar gay and lesbian adults from serving as leaders in the organization, even after lifting a ban on openly gay youth.

California's judicial code of ethics bars judges from holding "membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity or sexual orientation."

Read the rest here.

AEP: Europe's imperial court is a threat to democracy

The European Court of Justice has declared legal supremacy over the sovereign state of Germany, and therefore of Britain, France, Denmark and Poland as well. 

The ECJ's advocate-general has not only brushed aside the careful findings of the German constitutional court on a matter of highest importance, he has gone so far as to claim that Germany is obliged to submit to the final decision. "We cannot possibly accept this and they know it," said one German jurist close to the case.

The matter at hand is whether the European Central Bank broke the law with its back-stop plan for Italian and Spanish debt (OMT) in 2012. The teleological ECJ - always eager to further the cause of EU integration - did come up with the politically-correct answer as expected. The ECB is in the clear. The opinion is a green light for quantitative easing next week, legally never in doubt. 

The European Court did defer to the Verfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe on a few points. The ECB must not get mixed up with the EU bail-out fund (ESM) or take part in Troika rescue operations. But these details are not the deeper import of the case.

The opinion is a vaulting assertion of EU primacy. If the Karlsruhe accepts this, the implication is that Germany will no longer be a fully self-governing sovereign state. 

Read the rest here.

Yet another great court ruling

Here's to another great decision from the courts for personal freedom, and a black eye for the nanny state.

The Bloomberg big-soda ban is officially dead.

The state’s highest court on Thursday refused to reinstate New York City’s controversial limits on sales of jumbo sugary drinks, exhausting the city’s final appeal and handing a major victory to the American soft-drink industry, which bitterly opposed the plan.

In a 20-page opinion, Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr. of the New York State Court of Appeals wrote that the city’s Board of Health “exceeded the scope of its regulatory authority” in enacting the proposal, which was championed by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Read the rest here.

OK. Let's be brutally honest here. Soda is one of the worst things sold for human consumption that doesn't come with a health warning label attached. But while the government is within its rights to warn the citizenry about the health risks of certain products, in the end what people choose to eat or drink is their own business. So for those craving a super sized cup of liquid diabetes, drink up and rejoice! It's still a semi free country, even in New York.

Judges are voiding fraudulent lawsuits

On March 7 a California appellate court upheld a trial judge’s finding that what had been billed as a watershed liability verdict against Dole Food over pesticide use in Nicaragua was actually the product of a conspiracy by corrupt plaintiffs’ lawyers. That decision came only three days after a federal judge in New York ruled that a multibillion-dollar pollution judgment against Chevron (CVX) in 2011 was so tainted by bribery and coercion that it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

Meanwhile, in Texas, a prominent class-action injury lawyer faces mounting woes because of allegations that he faked thousands of damage claims against BP (BP) related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. When you combine these cases with the criminal convictions several years ago of plaintiffs-bar titans Mel Weiss, Bill Lerach, and Dickie Scruggs—all of whom served time for corrupting the civil justice system—it’s hard to deny that there’s deep dysfunction within a powerful portion of the legal profession that claims to fight corporate abuse on behalf of the little guy.

Read the rest here.

The threat of politics in the courthouse

The chaos surrounding the execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett was not just a wake-up call on capital punishment and how it is administered. The final hours also saw political efforts to bully and weaken Oklahoma’s courts. Similar battles are playing out around the country, threatening the ability of our courts to be fair and impartial.

When Lockett’s attorneys filed a lawsuit seeking information about the drug mixture that ultimately failed, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a stay to grant more time for review. But the governor announced that she would disregard the court’s ruling. A legislator introduced a resolution to impeach the five justices who had voted for the stay, alleging “a willful neglect of duty and incompetence.” The Supreme Court ultimately dissolved its stay and allowed Lockett’s execution to proceed.

The constitutional crisis may have been brief, but it was profoundly disturbing. As lifetime jurists and former chief justices of the supreme courts of Arizona and Indiana, we believe our treasured American system of checks and balances is harmed when our courts are threatened with intimidation. Our courts were designed to be the branch of government most insulated from politics.

Read the rest here.

Lawmakers demand more oversight of secret court

Wedged into a secure, windowless basement room deep below the Capitol Visitors Center, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates appeared before dozens of senators earlier this month for a highly unusual, top-secret briefing.

The lawmakers pressed Bates, according to people familiar with the session, to discuss the inner workings of the United States’ clandestine terrorism surveillance tribunal, which Bates oversaw from 2006 until earlier this year.

Read the rest here.