ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

Sunday's Washington Post reported "Bush Nominees Have Made Panel 'Too Conservative' for Many," in an article by Robert Barnes and Jon Cohen.

A growing number of Americans say the court has become "too conservative" in the two years since President Bush began nominating justices, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Nearly a third of the public -- 31 percent -- thinks the court is too far to the right, a noticeable jump since the question was last asked in July 2005.

The Supreme Court released the October Argument Calendar. SCOTUSblog summarizes the contents.

How Appealing reprints an article analyzing Justice Thomas's jurisprudence.

Jean Edward Smith's op-ed in the New York Times explores the idea of packing the Supreme Court.

When a majority of Supreme Court justices adopt a manifestly ideological agenda, it plunges the court into the vortex of American politics. If the Roberts court has entered voluntarily what Justice Felix Frankfurter once called the “political thicket,” it may require a political solution to set it straight.

John Dean, in a FindLaw article from February, suggests how to prevent conservatives from packing the Supreme Court in the event of a vacancy.

[A] president who late in his presidency seeks to influence the Supreme Court is, by definition, picking a fight. Thus, if Bush should find himself with a Supreme Court vacancy, Senate Democratic leaders should take the initiative. The Constitution calls for them to give "advice" to the President about such nominations. So they should explain why they will reject any nominee of the president who might drastically change the disposition of the Supreme Court, by giving it a solid conservative majority. . . .

The Senate could simply inform the president that given the current political balance of the country, not to mention the reaction of voters in 2006, the American public should have a chance to speak at the polls before any president effects a radical change in the Court. . . .

Should a vacancy occur more than, say, ten months away from the election, then Senate leaders should simply inform the President that they will not let him lock in a solid conservative majority on the Court.

Mark Sherman of the Washington Post explains the Supreme Court's response to health concerns regarding the justices.

Like society at large, the court lives with health issues large and small, letting the justices themselves decide whether and how to continue their work. In an institution that zealously guards the justices' privacy, how much to tell the public also gets decided on a case by case basis.