A vote on Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh’s nomination to the post of legal adviser to the Department of State has been delayed indefinitely in the Senate, sources familiar with the situation told the News this week.
Two Senate aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of confirmation votes, said that at least one senator had placed a “hold” on Koh’s vote. A hold is an informal practice in which senators express to the leadership that they may filibuster a bill, usually preventing it from coming to the floor until certain concessions are made.
A few years ago, Brian Deese put his studies at Yale Law School on hold to volunteer for the presidential campaigns of Sen. Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 and, after she dropped out of the race, then-Sen. Barack Obama. After the election, it might have seemed likely that Deese would return to the Law School, where he was once a member of the class of 2008, to receive his degree.
But it turned out President Obama had another assignment in store for Deese: He would be made responsible for the fate of the U.S. auto industry.
The Wall Street Journal has posted a recording of the controversial Ricci v. Destefano case being argued in front of the three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals — a panel that included President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79.
“We’re not suggesting that unqualified people be hired, the city’s not suggesting that,” Sotomayor told the firefighters’ attorney, Karen Torre, at one point in the hearing. “[But] if your test is going to always put a certain group at the bottom of the pass rate so they’re never, ever going to be promoted, and there is a fair test that could be devised that measures knowledge in a more substantive way, then why shouldn’t the city have an opportunity to try to look and see if it can develop that?”
According to a new book, a New York Times reporter learned about Watergate before the Washington Post published any of its groundbreaking investigative stories that eventually took down President Richard Nixon.
The only problem? The reporter had just been admitted to Yale Law School and left the newspaper before he could actually write about the scandal.
The White House released a transcript of the 40-minute ceremony this morning at which President Barack Obama announced his nomination of federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 to the U.S. Supreme Court. The text of Obama’s introduction and Sotomayor’s remarks are after the jump.
President Barack Obama’s nomination of federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 on Tuesday throws a new spotlight on Ricci v. DeStefano, a reverse discrimination case about a promotion examination used by the New Haven Fire Department.
In February 2008, in what is widely considered her most high-profile case, Sotomayor joined the unsigned opinion of a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in upholding a lower court’s decision to reject a lawsuit that had been filed by one Hispanic and 19 white firefighters against the city. The firefighters had said they were denied promotion based on their race, as the city had thrown out their 2003 promotion exam because no black firefighter received a score on the exam high enough to likely earn him a promotion.
Another Yale alumnus has joined the Obama administration, this time with a prominent gig in the Treasury Department.
The Senate confirmed Neal Wolin ’83 LAW ’88 as deputy treasury secretary, the number two official to Secretary Timothy Geithner, on Tuesday. Wolin, who was named deputy assistant to President Obama and deputy counsel to the president for economic policy in February, is a veteran of the department, having served as both general counsel and deputy general counsel.
“Neal brings a deep knowledge of the Treasury Department and strong managerial experience in both the private and public sectors,” Geithner said Monday, according to Agence France Presse. “I look forward to working closely with Neal at this critical moment in our nation’s history.”
Why not just nominate two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court now? In an op-ed published today in the Los Angeles Times, Yale Law School professors Akhil Amar ’80 LAW ’84 and Ian Ayres ’81 LAW ’86 argued that President Barack Obama should appoint an extra nominee to the nation’s highest court to speed up the confirmation process if another vacancy arises after Justice David Souter leaves the court in June.
An extra nominee, the professors said, would allow for justices to resign immediately, in contrast to the seven-month delay between former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s conditional resignation and the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito Jr. LAW ’75 to replace her.
Furthermore, they added, the definitive announcement of a replacement could persuade other justices to resign if they knew that a suitable successor lay in the wings. As an example, the professors argued that if Obama tapped a “true moderate” as a second nominee, it could very well persuade Justice Antonin Scalia, 73, to step down.
Future presidents need not worry about Obama packing the court with preemptive nominees. Per the Constitution, the professors said, a president can simply decline to commission a nominee, even if he or she was appointed by a previous president and confirmed by the Senate.
Several days after Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced that he would resign after the current term ends in June, The New York Times named Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan ’80 LAW ’84 a top contender to replace Souter. Karlan, an expert on constitutional law, is openly gay.
Currently, the Supreme Court features seven white men, one black man and one white woman. None of the current nine justices is gay. Besides Karlan, other possible Eli nominees include Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh, who is awaiting confirmation to become legal adviser to the Department of State, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, both of whom we commented on in a post last week.
The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has delayed its vote on Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh’s nomination as legal adviser to the Department of State, a spokesman for the committee said Tuesday.
The committee was originally scheduled to vote on Koh’s nomination Tuesday afternoon. The vote has now been postponed until next week’s business meeting, the spokesman said. He said he was unable to give a reason on why the committee postponed the vote.
No sooner did U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter announce his plans to retire from the nation’s highest court at the end of the term next month than did speculation on his replacement sweep Washington. Both Yale and Harvard make appearances on the short list published by The Washington Post today.
The Post named Harold Hongju Koh, the Yale Law School dean who was nominated earlier this spring to be the legal advisor to the State Department, but cautioned that since that nomination has come under fire by conservatives who oppose his views on international influence on U.S. law, a Supreem Court bid would be similarly embattled. Meanwhile, Elena Kagan, the former dean of Harvard Law School who was confirmed as solicitor general in March, was already considered a top choice for Obama’s first Supreme Court nomination when the President picked her for solicitor general.
Also on the list was Judge Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, who would be the first Hispanic on the Court and who sided with the city of New Haven in the firefighter’s discrimination case now facing the Supreme Court.
