Judicial Ethics

Well, conservatives have had their sights set on these limits for a long time. According to Paul Seamus Ryan from Common Cause, two contributions-limits cases currently have certiorari petitions before the Supreme Court, one from Montana and the other from Texas. “Both jurisdictions’ limits were upheld by the circuit courts—and the plaintiffs/petitioners in both cases are asking the Supreme Court to hear their cases and declare the challenged contribution limits unconstitutional,” Ryan told me Wednesday.

Americans deserve the whole record of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, not the whitewashed version the Senate Judiciary Committee’s majority has released. As this week’s extraordinary events in the Committee have made clear, this is the least transparent Supreme Court nomination process in our lifetime. Millions of pages of Judge Kavanaugh’s records have been withheld from the Senate and from the public. Many that are in the Judiciary Committee’s possession are still marked “committee confidential,” even though making them public will provide important information to the American people, as questioning by Senators Feinstein, Leahy, Klobuchar, Hirono, Booker, and Harris have made clear. Though the nominee may not recall many of his actions, the records have shown a very different story in some instances. Moreover, in response to probing questions by Sen. Blumenthal, Judge Kavanaugh refused to commit to recusing from cases involving President Trump’s potential criminal and civil liability that may be headed to the Supreme Court.

A Trump nominee for the federal bench failed to disclose that his wife works for the White House counsel

A grabbag for your Friday.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch risks violating judicial ethics if he follows through on plans to deliver a keynote speech at a “Defending American Freedom” luncheon next month at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Common Cause warned today.

Minutes after a lawyers’ group funded in part by industrialists Charles and David Koch welcomed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for a luncheon speech last August, another Koch-backed entity led a “stop government spending” rally in the same Montana hotel, a Common Cause analysis of Scalia’s annual financial disclosure report indicates