A senior Bush administration official told the Tribune that top officials in the administration have interviewed leading contenders, including, in recent weeks, Roberts. Sources close to the White House said Friday that senior administration officials are focusing most closely on Luttig and Roberts, although no decision has been made.

As liberals and conservatives gear up for a multimillion-dollar battle over a potential Supreme Court vacancy, a growing divide on the right threatens the unity of President Bush's coalition: Conservative legal scholars want their evangelical allies to keep quiet and take a back seat in any nomination battle.

 

Evangelical attacks on judges over the Terri Schiavo feeding tube case backfired on Republicans, polls taken in the spring indicated. Now, many conservatives fear the religious right could hurt the party's cause by using faith-based arguments about abortion, same-sex marriage, and the separation of church and state to promote a Supreme Court nominee.

 

Instead, many Republican lawyers with close ties to the White House are determined to present such a nominee to the country in the religiously neutral terms Bush used in last year's campaign: as a judge who ''knows the difference between personal opinion and strict interpretation of the law."

 

''We should be looking for outstanding jurists, not ministers," said Victoria Toensing, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration.

"The way to avoid the divisiveness and discord that occurred over past judicial nominations is through consensus and cooperation in the selection of future candidates," the Senate Democrats said in a letter sent to the White House Thursday.

2. Orin Kerr and others have properly identified Justice Thomas' dissent as a model of elegance. 

Nicole Garnett persuasively aruges that Thomas identifies a key political element of the majority's decision: eminent domain of the kind involved in this case pits the politically powerful against the politically powerless.  By arguing the rights of property owners, Thomas is in fact arguing the case of the "little guy".

In sum, shareholders deserve protection from theft, but not from risk taking, even when the risk in question is how much to pay an executive. Unfortunately, it's not clear that prosecutors know the difference -- or even care.

Just as sensationalist journalists pursue the most lurid tales of freakish behavior or bloodshed, some researchers willfully subvert science to achieve a headline-grabbing statistic, preferably with the most terrifying number possible. By establishing a dire threat, these mercenaries can attract funding for still more research.

As far back as 1994, Congress's General Accounting Office estimated the needless expenditures on electromagnetic field protections had already surpassed $1 billion. Power companies, municipalities, and school systems spend millions rerouting cables, installing shielding, or burying power lines. Rather than confront the public with facts, and rather than risk jackpot awards in frivolous lawsuits, utilities often just roll over and squander money on expensive measures unsupported by science.

We should not use unjust laws, giving them legitimacy, unless there are no reasonable alternatives. In this case, there are a number of alternatives, such as sending a polite request, sending a threatening legal letter, contacting the ISP directly, or even suing for copyright infringement (statutory damages are your friend).

While both measures are perceived as good news for business owners worried about liability costs, limitations on medical malpractice lawsuits will change little in Wisconsin because the state in recent years already has enacted its own laws imposing limits. The president's proposals would create federal laws that track with some that we already have in Wisconsin.

Other professions are not protected by damage caps, as are health-care providers.  Typically, claims against other professionals do not have a large non-economic component and therefore limits have not been deemed necessary.

Federalizing class-action lawsuits, on the other hand, may hold changes for Wisconsin businesses.  . . . While details of the proposed law are unknown at this time, most expect it will vest exclusive jurisdiction in the federal courts and prevent state court filings. It would not be surprising if the law also includes restrictions on when class-action suits may be filed.  (emphasis added). 

The tort reform battles have not yet exhausted themselves. It is important, however, to recognize them for what they are: a smokescreen for an attack on the jury system. And a dishonest attack, at that.

They deal with reducing damage awards in cases with actual, bona fide victims. I would suggest this is because the corporate sponsors of tort reform are more concerned with the awards they have to pay their REAL victims than they are with the costs of frivolous litigation.

If the latter was the concern, a loser-pay system would be their goal, or at least a system to require plaintiffs or their counsel to reimburse defendants if the litigation is dismissed as frivolous. We aren't hearing many cries for those sorts of reforms.

Your response to the article was an absurdity. Apparently, you failed to read the gist of the article, or knowingly chose to attack what you saw as distortions in the article rather than addressing its substantive points. As the article attempted to relate,what "serious proponents" of tort reform believe is truly unimportant versus public opinion as a whole, which serves as the major impetus behind the "reformist" movement. The fact is that the majority of people probably believe these urban legends to be true, and your side is of course reluctant to debunk such theories.

 

A more appropriate response, rather than flippantly discarding the article as "silly", would have been to address why the substantive points of the article were incorrect, namely the role of insurance companies using litigation as an excuse to raise rates on individuals. I think it would be further appropriate for you to disclose the amount of money that is contributed to you, your cause, and your website by insurance corporations. Perhaps you could conclude your disclosure with an addendum that would explain to a single mother why the value of her limbs, were they to be amputated through an unfortunate course of negligent events, would only be worth $250,000. "

There's the Bill Pryor Alabamians know.

 

Then there's the Bill Pryor portrayed by liberal special-interest groups.

 

One is smart and level-headed, who holds great respect for the rule of law. As Alabama attorney general, he demonstrated great courage by standing up to the state's biggest demagogue since George Wallace, in the form of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

 

The other, according to some civil rights, environmental and pro-choice groups, among others, would roll back individual rights and use a federal judgeship to espouse his extreme political and ideological beliefs.

 

"It is very hard to reconcile the two points of view," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said.

 

Actually, it's not. All Feinstein and other Senate Democrats have to do is quit relying on the distorted information of the liberal special-interest groups fighting Pryor's judicial nomination and talk to some Alabama Democrats.

Well, I actually know Pryor. Back when we were — we both clerked on the 5th Circuit for different judges. And back then he was known as sharp as a whip.

 

We weren't close back then, but he was well known even then as being a real bright light. And I think he's gotten a raw deal, quite frankly.

 

He's very conservative, there's no question about it. But I think it was very telling that he believes very strongly that the Ten Commandments can be shown in a monument or in a display. And yet, when there was that confrontation with Chief Justice Moore in Alabama, he carried out his duties.

 

He prosecuted Moore, even though he agreed with Moore. And so with Pryor, I think that he's gotten a uniquely raw deal, because he's proven that even against his own views, he will carry out the law.

The San Franciso Recorder has more feedback on the administration's nomination of Christopher Cox to Chairman of the SEC:

Securities lawyers know what they're getting with Christopher Cox, the Orange County Republican congressman President Bush nominated Thursday to be the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman.

But how they 1feel about the former Latham & Watkins partner depends on their side of the aisle.

Defense lawyers hail the longtime plaintiff bar foe as a savior for companies squeezed by the tight regulatory regime of current Chairman William Donaldson, who announced his resignation Wednesday.

Plaintiff lawyers are less sanguine.

"It's putting the fox in the chicken coop. He's the worst possible nominee imaginable," said plaintiff-side securities lawyer William Lerach. "He's blindly pro-business and anti-investor."

The partner at Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins said he expects Cox to roll back enforcement of Sarbanes-Oxley provisions, reduce penalties for violating SEC regulations and give companies more leeway to delay compliance with corporate responsibility laws.

For the most part, the defense bar agrees.

For myself, if Bill Lerach says that he is the "worst possible nominee imaginable" that says alot.

You know, when I went to Washington, I said, well, most of these legal matters can be solved at the state level -- until I began to look at the effect on the federal budget of these junk and frivolous lawsuits against docs. Because of these lawsuits, doctors either get run out of business, or the premiums go up, which cost you or the taxpayers more money, or they practice defensive medicine in order to stay out of the courts. It's estimated that these lawsuits cost the federal government about $28 billion a year. That's a lot -- even for all the money we spend, that's a lot. (Laughter.) And it's not necessary. We want people to have their day in court if they get injured by a lousy doc; but we got to do something about these frivolous lawsuits.

Numerous senior Andersen alumni are arguably better off now than they were pre-Enron. Many partners took their clients and vamoosed to one of the remaining Big Four accounting firms, which averted their eyes from any Enron taint. Today their services are in even greater demand thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley and the rash of post-Enron government regulations. It's one of life's political ironies that the fallout from the corporate scandals has enriched the very accounting profession that Congress claimed it was attempting to punish.

 

The Andersen prosecution is an exception to what has otherwise been a good Bush Administration record in prosecuting corporate wrong-doing. The Justice Department needed a political scalp at the time, and it is certainly true that Andersen's senior partners had a lot to answer for. But putting the company out of business harmed the innocent as well and arguably let the most culpable escape.