Battle For The Courts

This was a great session at the CAF conference! Marge Baker (People for the American Way) moderated it very well by structuring the questions, Dahlia Lithwick (Slate), Maria Blanco (Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race etc.), Bill Lurye (AFL-CIO) and Adam Bonin (Cozen O'Connor) were all excellent in explaining their deep knowledge about the courts and their political significance.

I learned new stuff, too! For instance, there's no real (legal) definition of an 'activist' judge except that of a judge who decided something the conservatives disliked, and the wingnuts have truly managed to sell us their vocabulary and their political programs. That progressives/liberals are not more concerned about the courts is especially worrisome given that one panel member noted that George Bush The Son appointed roughly one third of all Federal judges and that these judges were carefully picked to be younger, more rigid in their party-political affiliations and more conservative, all following the same playbook. Yet the courts ultimately set the ramifications which govern all our lives.

Thus, we should be concerned about the courts not only because of reproductive choice but also because of cases such as the Lily Ledbetter one and in general the conservative tendency to reduce the little gals' and guys' access to courts as a remedy.