Floating Post

Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 11:59 pm | Amy Howe | Print This Post

This post will sit on top of the blog all day.

The liveblog of the Alito hearings will occcupy most of the space on the blog today, but be sure not to miss our other posts, including coverage of today’s opinions (here) and the cases being argued today(here and here)



2 Comments »



  1. The live blog of the hearings looks great, but for those of us who don’t have the time to read it all, will you be doing any summaries of impressions from the day?

    G&H responds: Unfortunately, probably not. We have a terrific team of livebloggers putting together this group effort, but none of us individually have the time to watch enough to put together a “big picture” summary. But thanks for your kind comments.

    Comment by Observer — January 11, 2006 @ 10:40 am

  2. WHAT ALL THE “EGGHEADS” ARE MISSING ABOUT ROBERTS, ALITO & THE “RIGHT TO PRIVACY”

    Just as is now-C.J. Roberts, Judge Alito has mollified the ‘liberals’ on the Senate Judiciary Committee — including the venerable civil libertarian Ranking Memmber Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), by “affrming” his belief in a right of privacy springing from the United States Constitution, albeit not from the Ninth Amendment as evidenced by penumbras of the first ten Amendments, but rather from “the liberty clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

    What has eluded all Senators, pundits, TV talking heads, and even the outspoken and constitutionally brilliant Mr. Goldstein, is that these positions by Roberts and Alito present the spectre of a radical departure from SCOTUS privacy jurisprudence, posing the potential for overturning, inter alia, Roe v. Wade.

    The reason for this is elementary: The Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment does not prohibit the deprivation of life, liberty or property. Rather, it permits such deprivation provded ‘due process’ has been afforded the person so deprived. The question then becomes not whether privacy may be deprived, but rather, what process is “due” the person whose privacy is deprived. Thus, by affirming a right of privacy emanating solely from the 14th Amendment liberty clause, both Roberts and Alito leave open the very real possibility that they would uphold the criminaization of abortion. Such a holding would be entirely consistent with their stated views, because so long as a person received a fair trial following arrest for criminal abortion activity, the ‘right of privacy’ these jurists pin to the 14th Amendment’s liberty clause would not be violated. Given that SCOTUS jurisprudence has, over the last 25 years, drastically limited the situations in which procedural unfairness of a criminal proceeding may be deemed to violate the Due Process Clause, the danger is quite real that the views of these two Bush favorites will cause a majority to be constituted overturning Roe.

    I wish Leahy, Kennedy, Specter, et al would get hip to this. It has not been noted anywhere else. I’m happy to be the first to make this observation, here on Goldstein, Esquire’s blog. Mr. Goldstein, if you have the ear of the Senate Judiciary Committee, PLEASE don’t delay in getting the word to it regarding this stealth attack being perpetrated on the committee by the Administration neo-cons. I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to get any of their staffers to take notice.

    Thank you.

    /s/ J. Kevin Hunt
    Attorney
    Emphasizing Criminal & Capital Defense and Constitutional law

    P.S – Thanks for the offer of an amicus brief in Oregon v. Guzek (argued 12/07/05; SCOTUS No. 04-928). The probem we faced in that case is that every Justice participating in argument claimed that the Oregon Supreme Court had held that the 8th Amendment compelled admission of “residual doubt evidence,” when nowhere in its opinion did our state Supreme Court do any such thing. Accordingly, we declined to acknowledge that issue as being properly before the Court.

    Comment by jkhesq — January 11, 2006 @ 10:05 pm

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