RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler, January 13, 2012, The Brookings Institution
Russell Wheeler examines judicial nominations and Senate confirmation during the Obama administration’s first three years. Wheeler writes that while the pace of nominations and confirmations has increased, President Obama’s appointment of district judges does not match the rate of his two predecessors, leading to an increase in district court vacancies. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler, November 28, 2011, The Brookings Institution
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear a challenge to the health care law has led to recusal calls for Justices Thomas and Kagen. Russell Wheeler summarizes the principal sources of federal judicial ethics regulations, analyzes the possible impact of proposals to tighten ethical constraints, and envisions the justices’ courses of action. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler and Rebecca Love Kourlis, September 13, 2011, The Brookings Institution, The Governance Institute, and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, University of Denver
Committees that U.S. senators use to vet would-be federal district judges whom they might recommend to the White House are a little known but substantial part of the landscape of federal judicial selection. Working alongside the Governance Institute and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, Russell Wheeler describes a decision tree to streamline the judicial screening process, which outlines factors that senators and their staffs may wish to consider in creating a committee and highlights issues to consider with respect to committee operations. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler, March 21, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Russell Wheeler argues against proposals set forth recently by The New York Times and The Washington Post that called for the application of the U.S. Judicial Conference’s Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges to members of the Supreme Court as a new means of hastening Justices’ recusals and enforcing judicial ethics. As Wheeler sees it, these proposals are likely unconstitutional in part and rest on basic factual misunderstandings about federal judicial ethics regulation, thus creating a “cure-worse-than-the-disease” situation. Read More
PAST EVENT
Monday, February 28, 2011
2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Washington, DC
In his year-end report on the state of the judiciary, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. called for a long-term solution to filling judicial vacancies, reigniting debate on how to move beyond congressional gridlock on the selection of federal judges. Brookings and the Federal Bar Association hosted a Judicial Issues Forum on the judicial nominations and confirmations process and the prospects for its improvement. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler and Sarah A. Binder, February 16, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Russell Wheeler and Sarah Binder examine the impact of the rise of judicial “emergency districts” and “emergency vacancies” on patterns of nominations and confirmations in the most recent Congress (2009-2010). Despite the judiciary’s effort to flag this emerging crisis, there is limited evidence that the White House or the Senate have done much to confront the problem, write Wheeler and Binder. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Sarah A. Binder, January 04, 2011, The Monkey Cage
Chief Justice John Roberts' State of the Judiciary report released last week raises the specter of partisan gridlock over the selection of federal judges, writes Sarah Binder. Given that Republicans argue that too many of Obama's nominees are unfit ideologically for the bench and Democrats argue that Republicans are exploiting the rules for political gain, the chief justice is clearly correct: No party is innocent in the struggle to shape the ideological makeup of the bench. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler, January 04, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Complaints in the first two years of the Obama administration about the paucity and slow pace of nominations and confirmations recalled similar complaints over the last 18 years, writes Russell Wheeler. In a comparison between President Obama’s first two years with the past two administrations, Wheeler finds that Obama essentially matched Bush, but not Clinton, on court of appeals confirmations, had a slightly greater effect in changing the party-of-appointing president balance on the courts of appeal, and his appointees included fewer white males and members of the private bar. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Tim Wu, December 27, 2010, The Brookings Institution
According to Tim Wu, anyone who wants to understand free speech in America in the 21st Century needs to needs to know how the concept has expanded over time. A second tradition, dating from 1910 or the 1940s, goes beyond free speech as defined by the First Amendment, as it takes into account the actions of concentrated, private intermediaries who control the technology of mass communications. Read More
VIDEO
Russell Wheeler, December 24, 2010
The pace of confirmations to the federal bench has slowed in recent years, and President Obama’s nominees to the federal district courts and appeals courts have faced considerable partisan resistance. Visiting Fellow Russ Wheeler says historically, well-qualified presidential nominees were routinely confirmed to the bench, but that’s no longer the case.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Lawrence Lessig, December 17, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Predicting the future in constitutional law is so difficult because of constitutional interpretation, writes Lawrence Lessig. Constitutional meaning comes just as much from what everyone knows is true (both then and now) as from what the Framers actually wrote. Yet “what everyone knows is true” changes over time, and in ways that it is impossible to predict, even if quite possible to affect. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler, December 13, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Russell Wheeler surveys how judicial cooperation can take different forms in the service of different goals. One is enforced cooperation, followed by improvement sought in court operations through bench-bar judicial councils with recommending authority but no implementation authority. And lastly, there is internal administrative cooperation as a complement to hierarchical administration, which is alive and well. Read More
PAST EVENT
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
3:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Washington, DC
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer's new book, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View, aims to elevate the public's understanding of the Supreme Court and its political and societal impact. The Brookings Judicial Issues Forum hosted a discussion with Justice Breyer about the history of the Supreme Court and its efforts to apply constitutional values to current issues. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Russell Wheeler, September 27, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Russell Wheeler’s latest analysis disproves much of the current political rhetoric surrounding judicial nominations, as he concludes that as of September 26, Obama has made fewer nominees than Bush did and has taken longer to make them. Obama’s appointees have waited longer after hearings for floor votes, but his confirmation rate for pre-late May circuit nominees is slightly higher than Bush’s and his confirmation rate for similar district judges is noticeably lower. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Benjamin Wittes, September 17, 2010, The Brookings Institution
There are very few places where the Constitution is more visibly alive than in a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals case about a Guantánamo Bay habeas corpus issue, writes Benjamin Wittes on Constitution Day. An oral argument heard by highly intelligent judges of radically diverse politics who avoid political posturing entirely and bore in on important questions is a living thing of immediate and accessible constitutional beauty. Read More