Friday round-up
on Mar 10, 2017 at 6:45 am
In USA Today, Richard Wolf reports that the Justice Department provided the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday with more than 144,000 pages of documents from Judge Neil Gorsuch’s 13-month stint at the department in 2005-06, noting that at “the time, the agency was wrestling with issues such as how to treat terror suspects and justify warrantless wiretaps.” At Just Security, Jennifer Daskal notes that Gorsuch was also asked by ranking committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein to describe his role in “10 high-profile cases that were litigated” during his tenure, “involving warrantless wiretapping, detainee treatment, and broad assertions of executive authority in national security matters’; she argues that the “answer to these questions – regardless of one’s ultimate views on Judge Gorsuch – should be made publicly available.”
In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports that during his ten years on the court of appeals, Gorsuch was recused in more than 1,000 cases, and that the “high overall number of recusals appears to reflect the rigorous recusal procedures of his court, as well as Gorsuch’s stated desire to avoid even the perception of bias when it comes to cases involving a wide range of friends, former clients and colleagues.” At Education Week, Mark Walsh reports that the National Education Association “issued a report Thursday that is sharply critical” of Gorsuch’s “judicial record in special education cases, saying ‘hard-won protections for students with disabilities could be in peril’ if he is confirmed.” In an op-ed in The Washington Post, David Frederick argues that the “Senate should confirm” Gorsuch “because there is no principled reason to vote no,” maintaining that as “a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, Gorsuch has not been the reflexive, hard-edged conservative that many depict him to be.”
Briefly:
- In The American Lawyer (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro talks to Isaac Lidsky, the first blind Supreme Court law clerk, about Lidsky’s experiences clerking for retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2008.
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