Tag Archive: Politics

  1. Sotomayor nomination throws spotlight on firefighters case

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    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.

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  2. Brooke Shearer, founding director of World Fellows program, dies at 58

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    Brooke Shearer, a former Clinton administration official who later served as the founding director of Yale’s World Fellows program, died on Tuesday at her Washington home.  She was 58.

    The cause was cancer, according to The Washington Post.

    Shearer, the wife of former deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott ’68, served as a personal aide to Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 during the 1992 presidential campaign and then directed the White House Fellows program during the Clinton administration.  She came to New Haven in 2001 to serve as the founding director of Yale’s World Fellows program, which allows for emerging leaders from around the world to spend a semester studying at the University.

    She left Yale a year later when Talbott, who had been the inaugural director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, accepted the presidency of the Brookings Institution.

    (Photo: Yale University)

  3. Rell pledges to preserve death penalty

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    Legislation to ban the death penalty in Connecticut has hit a potentially fatal roadblock — the veto pen.

    Gov. M. Jodi Rell took the unusual step Friday of threatening to veto the bill before it has even come to her for consideration. In a statement, Rell said she understands both sides of the contentious issue but nevertheless concluded with a terse promise: “I will veto this bill as soon as it hits my desk.”

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  4. Eli snags Treasury post

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    Neal Wolin

    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.”

  6. Eli picked to lead National Endowment for the Arts

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    It turns out Harold Hongju Koh won’t be the only Yale affiliate to vie for Senate confirmation this spring.

    Former School of Drama professor Rocco Landesman DRA ’76, a producer who brought hits including “Angels in America” and “The Producers” to Broadway, has been nominated as the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House announced today.

    Landesman, 61, taught for four years at the Drama School as an assistant professor after receiving his Ph.D. in dramatic literature and more recently has served as a lecturer in theater management. Click here for more coverage from The New York Times, which first reported Landesman’s selection.

    In 2007, Landesman and Robert Brustein DRA ’51, the former Drama School dean and founder of the Yale Repertory Theatre, hosted a discussion at the Drama School on the state of non-profit theater in the United States, and the National Endowment for the Arts was among the topics the two dicusssed.  The session is available as a podcast on the Yale Web site; click here for part one and here for part two.

    (Photo: BroadwayWorld.com)

  7. Koh vote goes to Senate

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    The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations voted Tuesday to send Harold Hongju Koh’s nomination as legal adviser to the Department of State to the full Senate. But in a reflection of the recent debate of Koh’s nomination, the vote was split 12-to-5, almost exactly along party lines.

    Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the committee, was the only GOP member to vote with the Democrats in favor of Koh’s nomination.

    As we reported last week, the Foreign Relations Committee originally scheduled a vote on Koh’s nomination last Tuesday, but Sen. Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, delayed the vote until this week. The full Senate has yet to schedule a date to vote on Koh’s nomination.

  8. Amar and Ayres: Nominate now!

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    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.

  9. Karlan ’80 LAW ’84 a top prospect for Court

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    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.

  10. More suspense in Koh confirmation saga

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    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.

  11. Yes, more Koh speculation

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    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.