The Lichfield Group

This article appeared in the May 24, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

Senate Democrats gripe that Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen and California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown have authored dissents. According to their detractors, the dissenting views prove them outside the mainstream and unfit for appointment as federal appellate judges. To accept the argument as a general standard for judicial selection would transform constitutional law into a petrified forest. As with the physical sciences, progress in the law begins with challenges to orthodoxy.

This article appeared in the May 17, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

U.S. District Judge for the District of Nebraska Joseph F. Batallion exemplifies why Senate Democrats covet the judicial filibuster. Appointed by President Clinton in 1997 and touted by Democrats as a mainstream jurist, Judge Batallion last week savaged an amendment to the Nebraska Constitution intended to block same-sex “marriage” in Citizens for Equal Protection Inc. v. Bruning.

This article appeared in the May 16, 2005 issue of Roll Call.

Contrary to what Nan Aron writes in “What’s Wrong With President Bush’s Gang of Seven” (Guest Observer, May 10), the controversy over judicial filibusters is not about President Bush’s nominees. Senate Democrats and private groups are constitutionally entitled to assail them as unfit. Under the First Amendment and the Speech or Debate Clause, Democrats may seek to persuade a Senate majority to reject a candidate, as they did with Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork. Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R. Tenn.) offered them on April 28, 2005, a minimum of 100 hours of debate for each of Bush’s judges. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D. Nev.) summarily scorned the offer. Neither the Constitution nor democratic theory, however, empowers a political minority to thwart a Senate confirmation vote to avenge its inability to convince a majority. Tolerating rule by the minority turns government by consent of the governed on its head.

This article appeared in the May 10, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

“The more things change, the more they remain the same,” according to the long forgotten Frenchman Alphonse Karr. Take the bipartisan mauling of federalism.

This interview with Jim Williams appeared in the May 3, 2005 issue of the Washington Examiner.

With Congress breathing down Major League Basebal’s back on a number of issues, it raises the question: Is the antitrust exemption in trouble?

This article appeared in the May 3, 2005 issue of the Washington Times.

If the radical arguments defending judicial filibusters are accepted, the Constitution will be imperiled. The three branches will chronically clash and urgent unwritten constitutional rules will wither. The stakes thus transcend Senate confirmation of judicial nominees.