A Gay Justice?
Former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan is, according to the National Law Journal, one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. She’s a nationally prominent scholar and teacher of constitutional law, and author of the nation’s leading casebook in constitutional law.
Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, is founding director of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and is a leading expert on voting and the political process.
Sullivan and Karlan are both frequently mentioned as possible Supreme Court nominees for President Obama.
Both women also happen to be openly lesbian. … Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the conservative Family Research Council, says that “the real issue would not be the person’s private life but the issue would be would they be imposing their personal ideology upon the court. In this case would they be imposing a pro homosexual ideology, a pro-same sex marriage ideology.”
Sullivan, for instance, joined a friend of the court brief arguing that same sex marriage should be legal even if the “equal protection” clause “would not always have been interpreted by the courts to forbid discrimination against gay people.” Not allowing same sex marriage is a violation of “both due process and equal protection; the former because the right to marry is a form of liberty and the latter because the restriction treats lesbians and gay men differently from straight individuals.”
That she believes that because she’s lesbian, and not because she believes the refusal to allow same sex marriage constitutes unconstitutional discrimination, is another matter.
Either way, discussion about a Justice Sullivan or a Justice Karlan comes at a time when the Obama administration is hearing some impatience voiced by gay and lesbian activists on other issues.
“I think there is some disappointment in the gay community that (President Obama) hasn’t in this initial period spoken more directly and more forcefully about some of the issues he spoke about on the campaign,” Richard Socarides, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay and lesbian issues, told us for Good Morning America today. “Specifically the ‘Don’t ask/Don’t tell’ policy in the military.” See Gay Justice?
ABC News * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
 |
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/gay-justice.h…
GOP Senator Admits He Is Too Big A Bigot To Accept A Gay Supreme Court Justice
Republican Sen. John Thune:
“I know the administration is being pushed, but I think it would be a bridge too far right now,” said the South Dakota Republican. “It seems to me this first pick is going to be a kind of important one, and my hope is that he’ll play it a little more down the middle. A lot of people would react very negatively.”
See Fellow GOP Senator: Gay Nominee A “Bridge Too Far”
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/gop-senator-a…
Souter bids farewell
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Supreme Court Justice David Souter, momentarily choked with emotion, bid an affectionate farewell Tuesday to judges and lawyers he has worked with for nearly two decades.
Souter spoke at an annual conference of judges and lawyers from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Souter handles matters that come to the …
A first gay justice?
President Barack Obama is looking to advance diversity with his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter — and early speculation has focused on whether he’ll pick a woman, or perhaps the first Hispanic justice.
But gay rights groups — disappointed that Obama didn’t pick an openly gay man or woman for his Cabinet — are pushing him to put the first openly gay justice on the Supreme Court.
Within hours of word of Souter’s departure, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund was hailing the candidacy of a First Amendment scholar and former dean of Stanford Law School, Kathleen Sullivan. “Out lesbian a contender for Supreme Court,” one of the group’s web sites declared.
Another Stanford law professor on the “frequently mentioned” lists, Pam Karlan, has been open about being a lesbian, colleagues and former students say. In response to an e-mail from POLITICO, Karlan expressed no reticence about discussing her sexual orientation, though she downplayed talk about being a possible nominee.
“It’s no secret at all that I’m counted among the LGBT crowd,” she wrote, using a common acronym for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community. As for the possibility she’d be nominated, Karlan said, “Given the landscape, I’m flattered, but not fooled, by having my name tossed around.”
Unrelatedly, a rave for Karlan as “(1) brilliant, (2) broadly knowledgeable — Cass Sunstein aside, I can’t think of anyone who knows so much about so many different legal fields — and (3) a spectacularly gifted writer” from a right-leaning Harvard Law professor, William Stuntz.
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/first-gay-jus…
Same-Sex Marriage & the Family
New England has been at the center of the debate over granting marriage rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples.
Vermont became the first state in the nation to grant those rights in 2000 when it adopted civil unions. Four years later, Massachusetts became the first state to give gay and lesbian couples full marriage rights.
And last year, Connecticut’s Supreme Court determined that civil unions didn’t go far enough and ordered marriage, instead.
As part of annual Law Day observances, on April 30, 2009, Dartmouth College invited a lawyer and three Supreme Court justices who have participated in these decisions to talk about rulings from their respective courts.
The panelists are: Beth Robinson, a Middlebury lawyer who argued the Vermont case; retired Vermont Supreme Court Justice James Morse; Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Robert Cordy; and Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz.
See Same-Sex Marriage & the Family
Vermont Public Radio – Colchester,VT,USA
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/same-sex-marr…
Another possible first: An OPenly LGBT Supreme Court Justice?
Among the people whose names are being floated for the Supreme Court is Stanford Law Dean Kathleen Sullivan, a top constitutional scholar who has been active in gay rights battles in the Supreme Court, and who as the blog of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund writes, would be the first openly gay person on the court.
The group Lambda Legal wrote Obama in January pressing the appointement of “‘out’ LGBT judges.”
Human Rights Campaign emails over a statement from its legal director, Lara Schwartz, that the group “looks forward to seeing more openly-LGBT people appointed to the federal courts and other positions” but that “what’s most important is a nominee must have a track record that demonstrates her or his ability to consider and decide cases fairly.”
Politico -
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/another-possi…
Supreme Court takes up dispute over endorsement of gay adoption by Florida Bar’s family-law section
State Supreme Court justices critically questioned both sides today in a dispute over whether the family-law section of the Florida Bar should be allowed to legally endorse adoption for gay couples. A circuit judge in Miami threw out the statute banning adoption by gays but the case is headed for the Supreme Court. The Bar itself has not taken a position but its family-law section sought to file a “friend of the court” brief supporting the circuit court ruling. Lawyers supporting the statute objected — saying the Bar shouldn’t be using compulsory dues paid by all lawyers to fight on one side of a controversial issue.
Tallahassee attorney Barry Richard said the family section is a voluntary association and that its lawyer members have a right to take positions. But Matt Staver, representing the conservative Liberty Counsel, said Bar rules forbid lobbying on either side of a hot topic.
The attorneys argued over the distinction between lobbying the Legislature and filing a legal brief in court. They also disagreed about whether a voluntary section of the bar is restrained by the same rules applying to the full bar.
Chief Justices Peggy Quince and Justices Barbara Pariente, Fred Lewis, Charles Canady and Ricky Polston pressed Richard and Staver on the legal distinctions.
Pariente said that if the prohibition on pursuing controversial, divisive issues had been interpreted as a ban 50 years ago, the Bar could not have taken sides on racial integration. Lewis said he doesn’t think much of “friend of the court” briefs, because they are usually partisan advocacy rather than independent guidance on the law, and that the public doesn’t make a distinction between a section of the Bar and the whole Bar itself.
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/supreme-court…
Barney Frank clarifies ‘homophobe’ comment
Sen. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) hit the news circuit on Tuesday and Wednesday, explaining why he called Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a homophobe in an interview with 365gay.
“What a ‘homophobe’ means is someone who has prejudice about gay people,” Frank told Boston radio station WBZ. Scalia, he said, “makes it …
