TW: To me the judiciary is crucial, it is the third leg of the government and has been moving steadily rightward/wrongward. As this piece illustrates, Obama has arrived just in time to stave off a disastrous sealing of right-wing domination of the courts. The conservatives have gained effective control of the federal judiciary, this is change I can believe in.
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, which appears on the verge of stark change. Retirements on the 15-member court have left it divided with a slim 6-to-5 majority of Republican-appointed judges. That means Obama has four vacancies to fill and the potential to drastically reshape the court, which covers Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
In recent years, the Fourth Circuit had become the most assertively conservative court in the nation. Its judges have taken the lead in trying to reduce U.S. power in several areas, even once trying to lead the way in undoing the Miranda rule that criminal suspects must be apprised of their rights before they answer questions. The court's conservative majority also tried to roll back affirmative action policies and was reliably supportive of Bush administration efforts to widen presidential authority in detaining terrorism suspects without trial or charges without congressional input.
...Shaping the appeals courts, the level just below the Supreme Court, was at the heart of the strategy first put in place by conservatives during the Reagan presidency. They saw to it that President Ronald Reagan put at least one forceful and articulate conservative, usually an academic, on each of the circuit courts.
At least so far, the candidates being considered by the Obama White House for early nomination do not appear to have especially ideological profiles.
Because Republicans have controlled the White House for all of the last 28 years except the eight years of the Clinton presidency, more than 60 percent of the judiciary is made up of Republican-nominated judges.
The result is Republican control of eight of the regional appeals courts; Democrats have a majority in two circuits, the Second and the Ninth, based in San Francisco. The Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia, is split 6 to 6, with two vacancies.
Arthur Hellman, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh law school who is an authority on the circuit courts, said reliable studies regularly demonstrated that the Republican-appointed judges had moved the nation's courts in a more conservative direction in several areas.
They tend to be more restrictive of abortion rights, less accommodating to criminal defendants and sharply skeptical of expanding U.S. authority at the expense of the states."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/11/america/11judges.php
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