It’s probably not an accident that this comes immediately after Trump nominated Emil Bove to the Third Circuit. The ABA deep dive into bargain bin Roy Cohn promised to be amusing.
The ABA has historically been a rubber stamp for judicial appointments. They never had all that much power to begin with. Did the ABA stop Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito from taking the bench? What about Stuart Kyle Duncan or James Ho? Who have we actually been spared? Hell, how many members of the ABA are in the Federalist Society?
This isn’t a change in policy, its a continuation minus the fig leaf of academic approval.
Just because it’s been flouted in the past doesn’t make getting rid of it a good thing. The ABA is an excellent input into whether a judge or lawyer should be approved. Removing it is an explicit way to limit criticism that should be part of the record.
Just because it’s been flouted in the past doesn’t make getting rid of it a good thing.
At some point, you need to recognize the hollowness of the institution. Otherwise, you’re not doing anything to preserve legal standards, you’re just going through the formal motions.
The ABA wasn’t a good thing. It was a rubber stamp. As soon as it tried to be a good thing it was tossed aside. This is because the institution was hollow. It didn’t do the job people professed it was doing. It crumbled immediately on the slightest pressure.
The solution is to build a more durable and robust institution, not to prop the paper tiger back up again. America is desperately in need of drastic judicial reforms. Maybe we can salvage something out of the folks at the ABA who had the spine necessary to test the limits of their power. But a toothless outside privately managed club of attorneys that can be brushed aside at the slightest inconvenience obviously isn’t a benefit to judicial oversight.
I would not call admitting Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito the results of a leaky bucket.
This is more akin to a night watchman who has been letting burglars into your building for the last 40 years. Finally, he tries to stop one guy and the building manager fires him for getting in the burglar’s way. “But we can’t fire him! We’d have no night watchman!”
The ABA wasn’t doing the job it was allegedly assigned. Now it’s still not doing that job. Nothing has changed.
Terrible, yes, but I also wouldn’t say the ABA “admitted” either of those two.
Should they have been thrown out of the ABA? In a perfect world, sure, but that’s a whole different set of questions. And even then they could still have been nominated and confirmed. What would be different is the news orgs and the Senators confirming them would have no information instead of some.
If you’re specifically referring to the sexual assault claims or other malfeasance, that’s the FBI’s job to investigate (which they very notably and obviously did not with Justice Boof), not the ABA.
Should they have been thrown out of the ABA? In a perfect world, sure
Quit pretending minimum standards of decency are aspirations of perfection. Neither of these two men are qualified to handle slip-and-fail cases, much less adjudicate constitutional law.
Slip-and-fail cases is great. And they are horrible jurists in the sense that their decisions always hurt the people of the country in favor of moneyed interests.
HOWEVER, they took the classes, they passed the tests, and they know enough about law to act as a competent judge (something I think we’ll see a lot less of) in most cases. The legal system is not about the personal ethics or morality of the judges although it is affected by that.
[Wikipedia]
The process has been alleged by some (including the Federalist Society) to have a liberal bias.[84][85][86] For example, the ABA gave Ronald Reagan’s judicial nominees Richard Posner and Frank H. Easterbrook low “qualified/not qualified” ratings; later, the ABA gave Bill Clinton judicial nominees with similar resumes “well qualified” ratings.[87]
In 2001, the George W. Bush administration announced that it would cease submitting names to the ABA in advance of judicial nominations.[88] The ABA continued to rate nominees, just not before the names were released publicly. During the Obama administration, the ABA was once again given advance notice of judicial nominees for rating. President Trump returned to George W. Bush’s policy of not giving the ABA advanced notice of judicial nominees.[89] Seven of George W. Bush’s nominees received a ‘not qualified’ ranking, four of Clinton’s nominees, zero of Obama’s nominees, and, through December 2018, six of Trump’s nominees were rated ‘not qualified’.[90][91] For recent U.S. Supreme Court nominees, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson all received the same “well qualified” rating.
<blink>fascism in progress</blink>
The ABA has historically been a rubber stamp for judicial appointments. They never had all that much power to begin with. Did the ABA stop Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito from taking the bench? What about Stuart Kyle Duncan or James Ho? Who have we actually been spared? Hell, how many members of the ABA are in the Federalist Society?
This isn’t a change in policy, its a continuation minus the fig leaf of academic approval.
Just because it’s been flouted in the past doesn’t make getting rid of it a good thing. The ABA is an excellent input into whether a judge or lawyer should be approved. Removing it is an explicit way to limit criticism that should be part of the record.
At some point, you need to recognize the hollowness of the institution. Otherwise, you’re not doing anything to preserve legal standards, you’re just going through the formal motions.
The ABA wasn’t a good thing. It was a rubber stamp. As soon as it tried to be a good thing it was tossed aside. This is because the institution was hollow. It didn’t do the job people professed it was doing. It crumbled immediately on the slightest pressure.
The solution is to build a more durable and robust institution, not to prop the paper tiger back up again. America is desperately in need of drastic judicial reforms. Maybe we can salvage something out of the folks at the ABA who had the spine necessary to test the limits of their power. But a toothless outside privately managed club of attorneys that can be brushed aside at the slightest inconvenience obviously isn’t a benefit to judicial oversight.
It’s true, the bucket had a hole in it. But throwing the bucket away means there’s nothing now.
Except possibly the soiled towel that has been declared a “bucket” by executive order, which we might get in the future.
I would not call admitting Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito the results of a leaky bucket.
This is more akin to a night watchman who has been letting burglars into your building for the last 40 years. Finally, he tries to stop one guy and the building manager fires him for getting in the burglar’s way. “But we can’t fire him! We’d have no night watchman!”
The ABA wasn’t doing the job it was allegedly assigned. Now it’s still not doing that job. Nothing has changed.
Terrible, yes, but I also wouldn’t say the ABA “admitted” either of those two.
Should they have been thrown out of the ABA? In a perfect world, sure, but that’s a whole different set of questions. And even then they could still have been nominated and confirmed. What would be different is the news orgs and the Senators confirming them would have no information instead of some.
If you’re specifically referring to the sexual assault claims or other malfeasance, that’s the FBI’s job to investigate (which they very notably and obviously did not with Justice Boof), not the ABA.
Quit pretending minimum standards of decency are aspirations of perfection. Neither of these two men are qualified to handle slip-and-fail cases, much less adjudicate constitutional law.
Slip-and-fail cases is great. And they are horrible jurists in the sense that their decisions always hurt the people of the country in favor of moneyed interests.
HOWEVER, they took the classes, they passed the tests, and they know enough about law to act as a competent judge (something I think we’ll see a lot less of) in most cases. The legal system is not about the personal ethics or morality of the judges although it is affected by that.
[Wikipedia]