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Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:55:43 GMT
Governance Studies brings together people interested in improving the performance of our national government and bettering the economic security, social welfare, and opportunity available to all Americans.
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Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT
October 20, 2009 marked nine months since President Barack Obama took office. Russell Wheeler compares the nomination process for the courts of appeals and district courts of the George W. Bush administration with the current one, focusing on nominations made, hearings held, nominees confirmed and nominee characteristics. Wheeler reveals two striking findings: the relatively paucity of Obama administration nominees and the delay in full Senate action on those nominees.
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Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- October 07, 2009, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2009-2010 term will consider major arguments on issues ranging from state’s rights and separation of powers to dog-fighting videos. On October 7, the Brookings Judicial Issues Forum hosted a panel discussion to preview the most anticipated and important cases.
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Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:45:59 GMT
Sonia Sotomayor took the judicial oath of office on August 8, becoming the first Hspanic and third woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Visiting Fellow Russell Wheeler examines how the Obama administration will impact the judicial system and what we can expect from Justice Sotomayor.
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Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began July 13th. Melissa Rogers urged Senators to engage Sotomayor in a discussion of the broad principles and values animating the constitutional commands on religious freedom.
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Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT
President Obama will soon make his first Supreme Court nomination. It seems unlikely that the addition of President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court will change the outcome in church-state cases, writes Rogers, but the views and voice of his nominee will certainly affect the debate at the Court and shape decisions long after Obama leaves the White House.
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Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:44:51 GMT
Russell Wheeler says President Obama’s nomination of David Hamilton to serve on the appellate court was a thoughtful choice but will still draw criticism.
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Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Following the announcement of President Obama’s first judicial nomination, Russell Wheeler offers clues to how President Obama might affect the composition of the United States Courts of Appeals. A reasonable estimate is that the proportion of Republican appointees could drop from 56 percent to 43 percent; Democratic appointees could rise from 36 percent to 57 percent.
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Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- February 20, 2009, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
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.
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Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Brookings expert Russell Wheeler offers clues to how a President McCain or Obama might affect the composition of the United States Supreme Court as well as the courts of appeals.
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Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT
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.
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Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- September 04, 2008, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
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.
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Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- June 27, 2008, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
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.
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Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- June 24, 2008, 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM
Brookings hosted a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on international governance and American law. The event celebrated the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies at Brookings, which is named in honor of longtime Brookings trustee Ezra K. Zilkha.
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Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT
The Supreme Court recently handed down a decision upholding as constitutional the specific mixture of drugs by which thirty states put condemned prisoners to death. In this piece, Ben Wittes writes about the Supreme Court's failure to rationalize its decisions about cruel and unusual punishment.
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Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT
The fascinating 2008 presidential election has produced recent campaign finance developments, writes Thomas Mann, suffiently dramatic as to raise questions about the viability of the entire regime of campaign finance law.
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Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT
A decision recognizing an individual right to gun ownership will put a limit on how far gun control can go, writes Ben Wittes. Those who dream of a gun-free society will have to dream of ratifying a new constitutional amendment.
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Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- October 10, 2007, 9:00 AM to 10:30:00 AM
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.
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Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:09:30 GMT
News release from the Brookings Institution, Office of Communications, July 2002.
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Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:09:01 GMT
New Brookings-AEI Center for Regulatory Studies for State Court Judges.
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Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:08:09 GMT
Russell Wheeler, the former deputy director of the Federal Judicial Center, will join the Brookings Institution as a guest scholar starting this fall.
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Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT
The Supreme Court begins its term on October 1st. Benjamin Wittes of Governance Studies weighs in on some of the big cases on their schedule and the ideological divisions within the court.
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Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT
An Ad Hoc Group on Federal Judicial Salaries, comprised of former U.S. senators and representatives, has called for Congress to end the practice of linking the salaries of federal judges and those of members of Congress. In this paper, Russell Wheeler and Michael Graves describe the history of interbranch salary linkage and analyze it as policy.
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Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing District of Columbia’s gun-ban appeal. The city's ban on handguns is one of the strictest in the nation and has been in place for 31 years. In this context, Benjamin Wittes argues that the Second Amendment is linked to institutions that no longer exist, but that its modern interpretation embodies values that many do not agree with. So to enable sensible gun control, "Let's repeal the damned thing," Wittes says,
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Tue, 20 Jun 2006 11:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- June 20, 2006, 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM
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.
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Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 GMT
Drawing on a unique data set consisting of thousands of judicial votes, Cass Sunstein and his colleagues analyze the influence of ideology on judicial voting, principally in the courts of appeal. They focus on two questions: Do judges appointed by Re
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Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- January 17, 2006, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
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.
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Fri, 10 Jun 2005 10:00:00 GMT
Event Information:
- June 10, 2005, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
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.
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Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:00:00 GMT
Interview with E.J. Dionne, Jr.; The Diane Rehm Show (3/30/05)