July 01, 2005

With Women Like These...
by Lorraine Berry

Years ago, when Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister of England, her slash-and-burn approach to unions had a devastating impact on the North. (I wish you could hear someone from the North say "north;" it has more syllables than you might think.) My family is from the North of England, and we don't vote Tory. One day, my grandmother (who will be 89 in November) had this to say about England's Iron Lady: "I don't understand all these people who say that a woman can't do the work of a man. Maggie Thatcher does the work of two men: Hitler and Mussolini!"

I thought about that as I reviewed the potential women nominees to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. My suspicion is that GWB will nominate a woman because he thinks the vast majority of us will think that nominating a woman means that women will get behind the nomination. I know that seems blazingly simple-minded of him, but ya know.

This is thrown together quickly. If you have more information on these women, please feel free to post; I'll update.

According to Bloomberg, there are three potential women nominees. Reading just this brief material about each of them has made my ulcer act up.

Judge Edith Brown Clement, 57, was appointed by Bush to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. From 1991 to 2001 she was a U.S. District Court judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

She wrote a majority opinion in a 2003 case that slashed a jury's award of damages to the estates of a mother and 3-year-old daughter who were killed when their car was struck by a tractor trailer. The jury had awarded $200,000 to each estate for pain and suffering. Clement's majority opinion reduced the mother's award to $30,000 and eliminated the daughter's award, saying there was no evidence of her ``awareness of the impending collision.''

Bush wants Congress to limit pain and suffering claims in court cases, proposing a cap of $250,000 in non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.

more on Clement:

Judge Janice Rogers Brown, 56, won Senate confirmation last month to join the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, benefiting from an agreement among a group of Republicans and Democrats that averted a showdown over the power of Senate Democrats to block Bush's court appointments.

Bush nominated Brown, a member of the California Supreme Court since 1996, to the appeals court in 2003, only to be thwarted by a Democratic-led filibuster in Senate.

Brown is an advocate for the rights of private property owners. In 2002, she criticized a San Francisco requirement that hotels open up some rooms to long-term residents, saying ``theft is theft even when the government approves of the thievery.''

In opposing Rogers's appellate nomination, Democrats seized on her speeches as well as opinions. In remarks to the Federalist Society in Chicago in 2000, Brown described the Supreme Court decisions in the 1930s upholding New Deal legislation, as ``the triumph of our own socialist revolution.'' She also equated ``big government'' to ``slavery.''

In criminal cases, Rogers has advocated limits on the government's power to search suspects and their property. In one such case, a 2002 drug dispute, she signaled she may not feel bound by Supreme Court precedent. ``If our hands really are tied, it behooves us to gnaw through the ropes,'' she wrote.

With Brown's recent appointment, there's a ton of info on the internets about her.

Judge Edith Hollan Jones, 56, was named by Reagan to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on which she has served since 1985.

She is a frequent guest speaker at the Federalist Society, a self-described conservative legal research foundation. Jones openly criticizes Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. In a 2004 opinion, she wrote that ``if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe's balancing scheme with present-day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe Court knew.''

At a hearing in January, Jones labeled ``not reasonable'' the 24-year prison sentence given to ex-Dynegy executive Jamie Olis for accounting fraud. Jones said she was ``very sympathetic'' to arguments by Olis's lawyers that the sentence was too harsh compared with those given to other executives who pleaded guilty to white-collar crimes. The court has not ruled on Olis's appeal.

More on Jones.

Crap. Where is Emma Goldman when you need her?

Posted by in Abortion, Activism, Blog Sheroes, Civil Rights, Culture War, Gender, George W. Bush, Law, Supreme Court, W T F
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Technorati Cosmos

Trackbacks

Trackback for this post:
http://www.culturekitchen.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/3063

The following blogs make reference to this post :

Say it loud, say it proud!