It’s not as if it were dull work before, but the job as the Treasury Department’s top lawyer just got a whole lot more interesting. Marisa McQuilken has this profile of general counsel Robert Hoyt, the 44-year-old former Wilmer partner and associate White House counsel in the thick of the government's historic intervention in the U.S. financial system.
In Tony Mauro’s Courtside column, he talks with former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who is on the brink of his 50th argument before the Supreme Court, a milestone few can claim.
Next on the list is this item about an essay on D.C. v Heller by J. Harvie Wilkinson III, one of the top candidates for chief justice before John Roberts Jr. got the job. Wilkinson, drawing sighs of relief from gun rights advocates everywhere, makes clear he would have gone the other way in Heller, creating a 5-4 majority for Justice John Paul Stevens’ view that the right to bear arms is militia-related.
And finally, find out what Vanderbilt University political scientist Pamela Corley found when she filtered Supreme Court majority opinions and merits briefs from the 2002, 2003, and 2004 terms through some heavy-duty plagiarism software.
Since the Sentencing Commission voted to reduce sentences for crack cocaine offenders last year, the Justice Department generally has not contested inmates’ requests for time off. No longer. Joe Palazzolo has a story about the first set of appeals by the U.S. attorney’s office here. Prosecutors are challenging the rulings of two federal district judges who reduced sentences far below what the Sentencing Commission prescribed.
I'm sure this attorney will find it incredibly difficult to be a in a Republican administration that has advanced this much government intervention into the economy. A Democrat administration would be more prepared for such activity, but a Republican one is a bit different.
Posted by: JT | September 22, 2008 at 11:09 AM