Word: benching
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When the clamor reached a climax, the Soviet President, sitting glumly on a back bench of the tribunal, decided he had heard enough. Gorbachev intervened to defend his embattled Prime Minister. His voice quavering with emotion, he warned against "shaking up all political institutions" in the country. "If someone proves incompetent," said Gorbachev, "let's remove him. But in a normal fashion. Not by pushing him up against the wall." All the "insults and insinuations," he charged, left a "bad odor...
...than reliable vote for either side of the abortion issue. In a rambling television interview last week, Justice Thurgood Marshall, a last vestige of the high court's liberal wing, took the unusual step of sizing up in public a man who may soon sit alongside him on the bench. Harrumphed Marshall: "Never heard...
Whatever Souter's fitness for the court, his relative obscurity has prompted many to reflect unhappily that the path to the high bench may now be open only to candidates who leave few footprints on the way. A large and respected body of commentary on constitutional law -- the very thing that used to be considered an important qualification for any would-be Justice -- appears to have become a disadvantage instead. Asks Arizona Senator John McCain, a Republican: "Should law students in America now be saying to themselves, 'I better not write or speak on controversial issues if I aspire...
...consider out of more than 4,000 petitions. The Justices -- six of whom pool their clerks for this purpose -- lean on the memos of their young assistants to help them pick the cases to hear. Once the docket is ^ selected, the clerks turn out even more detailed documents, called bench memos, exploring and analyzing all possible sides of the disputes, to prepare their Justices for the oral arguments...
...Souter, who served on the New Hampshire Supreme Court until he was nominated and confirmed for the federal appeals bench nearly a year ago, mostly signed on to opinions written by other justices, leaving little in the way of a political paper trail...