Word: lower-court
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...violate the AEDPA, which specifically bars the district judges from having anything more to do with this case. This wrinkle sent Justice Antonin Scalia to his writing desk. In a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Scalia noted the odd fact that the Supreme Court was ordering the lower-court judge to hold a hearing that, according to Congress, the judge is not allowed to convene. "Without explanation and without any meaningful guidance," Scalia wrote, the court was sending the district judge "on a fool's errand." The evidence, he asserted, "has been reviewed and rejected at least three times...
...days after voters went to the polls, Minnesota has yet to seat its junior U.S. Senator. On June 1, the state's supreme court heard arguments on the intricacies of absentee-ballot rules, which the incumbent candidate, Republican Norm Coleman, contends were inconsistently applied and would therefore invalidate a lower-court ruling that Democrat Al Franken won the race by a margin of just 312 votes. The court is expected to rule on the issue within weeks. Franken's admission to the Senate would give Democrats a 60-vote majority, which would enable them to override Republican filibusters...
...During the oral argument for the case, Sotomayor was an active questioner, but the decision eventually released by her three-judge panel was a brief, unsigned order. With little explanation, it affirmed the lower-court decision dismissing the firefighters' claim that the city discriminated against the white firefighters by throwing out the test. In a subsequent opinion, one of Sotomayor's colleagues and longtime mentors, Judge José Cabranes, criticized the panel for disposing in such a cursory way issues that were "indisputably complex and far from well-settled." Ricci and the others appealed the panel's ruling...
...rare hot-button rulings, seven years ago Sotomayor decided against an abortion-rights group that attempted to challenge the federal ban - since lifted by President Obama - on funding international family-planning groups that provide abortions. Writing to uphold a lower-court decision that threw out the case, Sotomayor said, "The Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the antiabortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds." But that case didn't require Sotomayor to comment on the fundamental premise of Roe v. Wade - that the Constitution provides a right...
...Perhaps. But for all the controversy or appeal that sentiment may arouse, it's not a useful guide to how Sotomayor has ruled. Like that of most lower-court judges, much of her history on the bench has involved minute applications of the law, not the kind of cases in which life experience, even when it is as inspiring as hers, would have offered much guidance. There tend to be more cases of the big-picture kind on the Supreme Court, and if she gets there, she may take the opportunity to become the passionate liberal she has never really...