Ted Frank, director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest and contributor to PointofLaw.com and Overlawyered.com, dissects Barack Obama’s voting record on legal reform legislation in an op-ed this week in the Washington Examiner.
Despite his campaign’s non-partisan or bipartisan or post-partisan pretensions, Frank writes that Sen. Obama’s votes leave little doubt an Obama […]

After 18 days of testimony and a full day of closing arguments, jurors in the criminal case against Geoffrey Fieger began deliberations on Wednesday this week. After two days, they had not reached a verdict and will be back at it again today.
Fieger is accused of illegally reimbursing more than $100,000 in political donations […]

The people of Tennessee got a step closer to reclaiming their constitutional right to vote for state judges when the legislature adjourned last week without reauthorizing the judicial selection commission. But an article in the Memphis Daily News makes it clear the battle is not over.
While Tennessee’s judicial selection commission has entered a one […]

Those who believe we should replace the democratic election of state judges with a Secret Selection committee should read The Washington Post’s “Maryland Moment” blog.
Today’s post reveals the nasty politicking that occurs behind the Secret Selection committee’s closed doors. Three members of Maryland’s Judicial Nominating Commission have resigned in protest due to heavy political […]

Shira Goodman at JudgesOnMerit.org argues that Secret Selection (aka “merit selection” – where lawyers meet behind closed doors to pick judges) is actually more democratic than elections by the people.
So let me get this straight: Choosing judges by direct election, where all Pennsylvania citizens can exercise their constitutional right to vote, is undemocratic. […]

Carter Wood over at NAM’s ShopFloor blog (also cross posted to PointOfLaw.com) is tracking the latest developments regarding a nanotechnology study that’s getting a fair amount of news coverage.
Could nanotech become a magnet for asbestos-style litigation? A letter to the editor in yesterday’s Washington Post (”Overstating the Nanotube Threat“) tries to calm down the […]

The Las Vegas Review-Journal recently polled lawyers in Clark County, Nevada to find out which system they favored for selecting judges: democratic elections, where voters decide, or a “merit selection” system, where a committee of lawyers vets candidates in secret and then sends an approved list to the governor.
Guess what? Lawyers think they ought […]

Adam Liptak of the New York Times has a long piece comparing democratic judicial elections in America unfavorably with the French system where judges complete a “four-day written test” before entering “the 27-month training program at the École Nationale de la Magistrature, the elite academy in Bordeaux that trains judges in France.”
Liptak uses as his […]

Nice editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal on the welcome demise of Tennessee’s judicial selection Star Chamber.
Money quote:
“The Tennessee plan was devised to reduce the role of politics in judicial selection. But as the political drama surrounding it amply demonstrated, the reality has been anything but nonpartisan. Tennessee now has a chance to restore transparency […]

Poor Shira Goodman - part of the gang over at Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts that wants to abolish the constitutional right of Pennsylvania citizens to choose that state’s judges and let a committee of lawyers meet in secret to decide who sits on the bench. She’s got a losing hand but she just keeps […]