Litigation

Thursday Gavel Grab Briefs

By Peter Hardin

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• “Do Judicial Emergencies Matter? Nomination and Confirmation Delay During the 111th Congress” is the title of a paper posted online by the Brookings Institution and written by Russell Wheeler and Sara Binder. “Despite the judiciary?s effort to flag the vacancies it believes are most in need of filling, there is only limited evidence that the White House and the Senate?so far?have paid special attention to these emergency vacancies,” the paper states.

• In Hawaii, state senators confirmed Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s nomination of Judge Sabrina McKenna to the state Supreme Court, where she will become the state’s first openly gay high court justice, KHON TV reported.

• Justice Cynthia Kinser took the oath of office as the first female chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court, according to an Associated Press article.

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 17, 2011 (boomark / email).