2009
March 17, 2009
President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has left many thorny questions for his administration to resolve. On March 17, the Brookings Institution hosted a Judicial Issues Forum in partnership with the Progressive Policy Institute to examine these questions.
February 20, 2009
The Justice Department’s immigration courts have been the object of attention not only for how their judges have been selected but also for their heavy caseloads and shortage of resources, including the inadequacy of legal representation available to aliens. On February 20, Russell Wheeler moderated a discussion on these issues with Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and other immigration law experts.
2008
November 12, 2008
Key legal and constitutional policy issues from the Bush administration will no doubt carry over to the Obama administration: protecting national security with due regard for civil liberties, achieving an immigration policy that secures the nation's borders and treats lawful immigrants fairly, and identifying the proper extent and limits of presidential authority. On November 12, Brookings Visiting Fellow Russell Wheeler moderated a panel of experts to discuss what this will mean for the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies.
October 6, 2008
The constitutionality of a key Voting Rights Act provision, the FCC’s ban on broadcasting “dirty words" and many other cases are on the docket for the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008-09 term. The Brookings Judicial Issues Forum hosted a panel discussion with leading legal scholars and practitioners who offered their insights on the upcoming court term and discussed some of the biggest cases the justices will hear.
September 09, 2008
Hot-button social topics often dominate voters' views of where presidential candidates stand on judicial appointments. Plus, as in much of U.S. politics, the process of getting judges on the bench has become cantankerous and divided. Russell Wheeler says that the next president should try to work with the Senate to restore civility.
September 4, 2008
The next U.S. president may well have to reconfigure both the Supreme Court and the U.S. courts of appeals. On September 4, the Brookings Judicial Issues Forum hosted a discussion of how John McCain or Barack Obama might approach this opportunity differently and how they might address the challenges associated with appointing judges and shaping courts.
June 27, 2008
In June 2008, the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns and ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who rapes a child. The Court also ruled in favor of Guantánamo detainees' habeas corpus rights. On June 27, Brookings Fellow Benjamin Wittes moderated a briefing on these rulings and other developments of the 2007-08 term.
February 1, 2008
In a conference co-sponsored by the American University Washington College of Law and Brookings, panelists discussed the pros and cons of establishing a special National Security Court for the purpose of conducting major terrorism trials, and what jurisdiction should be assigned to such a court.
January 7, 2008
Questions about identification requirements for voting continue to inspire rancor from both sides of the aisle as policy-makers seek to prevent voter fraud and address concerns that such rules disenfranchise poor and minority voters. On January 7, two days before the Supreme Court arguments, the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and the Brookings Judicial Issues Forum hosted a discussion previewing the arguments and exploring the legal issues underlying the cases.
2007
October 10, 2007
Brookings's Judicial Issues Forum hosted a discussion on prosecutorial misconduct, examining its frequency at the state and federal levels, the circumstances under which it is most likely to occur and strategies to minimize its impact.
June 11, 2007
Brookings continued its Judicial Issues Forum series with a discussion of the practical and constitutional arguments for and against various forms of gun control. Panelists included Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center; Randy Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse professor of legal theory at the Georgetown University Law Center; Jens Ludwig, professor of public policy at Georgetown University and nonresident senior fellow at Brookings; and Benjamin Wittes, guest scholar at Brookings.
April 20, 2007
Brookings continued its Judicial Issues Forum series with a discussion on lessons learned from the attorney general firings and other legal controversies. Panelists discussed the trial and conviction of Scooter Libby, former White House chief of staff; the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act; prosecution of voter fraud; and the replacement of all U.S. attorneys by the Clinton Administration in 1993.
2006
December 4, 2006
On November 29, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on one of the most important environmental cases in decades, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The justices reviewed a federal appeals court ruling in favor of the Bush Administration's refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. On December 4, Brookings continued its Judicial Issues Forum series with a discussion on the case and the larger issues around global warming.
October 30, 2006
The 2006 mid-term elections presented new questions about gerrymandering—particularly how Election Day results would be affected by congressional redistricting designed to provide an electoral edge to certain political parties and incumbents, or to disadvantage racial groups as the Supreme Court recently ruled Texas had done.
September 5, 2006
Brookings continued its Judicial Issues Forum series with a discussion on whether the death penalty deters crime, whether it is administered fairly, whether death row exonerations prove the system a failure, whether federal courts should provide more-or less-supervision of state death sentences, and whether the abhorrence of our death penalty regime overseas should tip Americans of mixed views toward the abolitionist position.
June 20, 2006
Brookings continued its Judicial Issues Forum series with a discussion of whether judges are political, examining the impact of ideology on the federal judiciary. A group of leading legal analysts discussed the Brookings book, Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary.
March 17, 2006
President Bush's authorization of National Security Agency eavesdropping on communications between the United States and other countries that are said to involve Al Qaeda is helping bring to a boil the long-simmering debate over the president's expansive assertions of presidential war powers. Brookings continued its Judicial Issues Forum series with a look at the both current and historical debates—going back to the colonial era and the framing of the Constitution—about the extent of the president's war powers.
January 17, 2006
Brookings hosted a Judicial Issues Forum discussion on the battle to confirm Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and what it says about the state of the confirmation process.
2005
December 12, 2005
Controversial interrogation techniques such as waterboarding have become flash points in the debate over the limits of U.S. interrogation policy. Stuart Taylor, Jr. moderated a panel discussion on whether the nation can protect itself against terrorism while giving captured terrorists traditional protections of federal and international law.
October 17, 2005
Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, an influential voice on the Supreme Court since 1994, spoke at Brookings. Justice Breyer discussed the Constitution and how the Supreme Court interprets it; the relationship among the Supreme Court, Congress and the executive branch; and recent Supreme Court decisions on religion, free speech, affirmative action and privacy.
September 16, 2005
As the U.S. Senate debated the nomination of Judge John Roberts, Jr. to become the 17th chief justice of the United States, the Brookings Institution held a panel discussion on the issues likely to be raised in the Senate floor debate on the nomination as well as the important issues the court is expected to decide over the next twenty years.
June 10, 2005
A panel discussion with six leading legal experts on why the judiciary now finds itself so reviled in Congress; the role of the appointment process as a form of democratic accountability; the conflict over filibustering of nominees; the efforts to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over some issues; and the talk of impeaching judges for perceived usurpations of power.
February 25, 2005
A Judicial Issues Forum discussion among leading experts on the calamity in Darfur and the international community's failure to empower a suitable war crimes tribunal. The session reviewed the gravity of the situation in Sudan, the controversy over efforts to grant jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court, and the limited potential of other options—such as turning to the Rwanda genocide tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, as an alternative.
2004
July 8, 2004
In one of the most important decisions in many decades on the tensions between the president's wartime powers and civil liberties, the Supreme Court upheld executive detention of "enemy combatants" during wartime. Four former high-level government officials—who served in both Bush administrations as well as under Presidents Reagan and Clinton—discussed the decisions and their implications for future actions by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.