Tag: Brown v. Board of Education

President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next Deputy Attorney General replacing Rod Rosenstein came under fire for refusing to answer whether he agree with two landmark Supreme Court rulings: Roe v Wade which guaranteed access to legal abortion and…

Chief Justice John Roberts defended the independence of the federal judiciary in the wake of a tense confirmation battle for Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Roberts was at the University of Minnesota Tuesday as part of a lecture series with the law school, an appearance scheduled long before the hearings. But ahead of an interview with University of Minnesota law professor Robert Stein, the chief justice addressed what he called "the contentious events in Washington of recent weeks." He said the Supreme Court's role is clear — to be an independent arbiter of the U.S. Constitution. Asked if there was ever a chill in the room after a particularly divisive 5-4 decision, Roberts said no. And the way to do that is to get as many people on board as you can." Roberts said his bigger concern is ignorance about the court's role as an equal branch of government. "I think too many people think that when we reach a decision on a case, it's pretty much the same as Congress reaching a decision on a question of policy. Roberts said when he crafts opinions, he aims to write in a way that can be understood by people who are not lawyers or legal scholars. Even after the fight over Kavanaugh's confirmation, Roberts promised that the tradition of collegiality will continue, noting that all the justices shake hands ahead of every oral argument and before heading to the conference room to discuss the cases before them.

It’s time to re-establish a permanent home for the state appeals court that serves the Tampa Bay region. But with pork chop politics driving the decision on where to locate appeals courts, as they have since these courts were established in the 1950s, sense has taken a back seat in the debate so far. Created as relief for an overburdened Supreme Court, and a force for progress during the desegregation era that followed the seminal Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, Florida’s District Courts of Appeal review decisions from lower tribunals through multi-judge panels. RELATED COVERAGE: Tampa appellate judges long for a home (without bullets) State lawmakers from Polk County want Lakeland to remain the home of the 2nd District Court of Appeal. Even then, though, it was political wrangling at decision time that snatched the headquarters from Orlando. Today, the court operates almost entirely out of leased space at the Stetson Tampa Law Center, near downtown — a satellite campus of the university’s Gulfport-based College of Law. • The population of the 13 counties is centered in the Tampa Bay region, with 41 percent living here and 12 percent in Polk County. Still, state Sen. Kelli Stargel, a Republican whose legislative district includes Lakeland, told Dan Sullivan of the Tampa Bay Times recently: "I haven’t seen a compelling reason why having a courthouse in Tampa meets the needs of the public any more than having a courthouse in Lakeland." Stargel apparently needs to study the report. What a new home for the 2nd District Court of Appeal should look like remains to be seen.