Tag: Brian Vukadinovich

There is something very fundamentally flawed in the way that federal judges are vetted in the appointment and confirmation process. Federal district court judges, circuit court of appeals and supreme court judges are political appointments and are nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate. Because these are basically lifetime appointments, we should be much more inquisitive in the selection process. Quite frankly, the questions that the senators ask at the senate confirmation hearings of the judicial nominee are getting to be old hat and not helpful to the majority of the population in terms of the limited subject matter of the questions. The public has been quite accustomed to listening to the same types of questions as to the same issues time after time whenever there is a senate confirmation hearing, irrespective of which political party is in power. The issues that are thrust into the confirmation hearings are always the hot button issues involving abortion rights, gun control and so forth, and a small handful of others that have made it to the front pages of the day. It’s the same old drill every time as the senators from each party frame their questions in the manner that suits their political interests the best, and we get the standard responses back from the judicial nominees. And without exception there are always the several supreme court precedents that come into the questioning such as Roe v. Wade and so forth as the judicial nominees sit there looking like trained lap dogs barking out the “politically correct” canned answers —and then wait for their treat. The senators act as though there are no other issues meaningful to the public other than the regular hot button issues of the day… Read More

Chief Justice John Roberts has been recently quoted as saying that the nation’s federal courts are doing a better job of policing themselves which he called essential for the ability of the judicial branch to maintain its independence. Roberts also said that the judiciary’s power to manage its own internal affairs “insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co-equal branch of government.” https://nypost.com/2022/01/01/chief-justice-john-roberts-warns-against-inappropriate-political-influence-in-federal-courts/. Roberts must be delusional if he thinks what the courts are doing are “preserving public trust” since the same article in which he was quoted pointed out that the latest Gallup poll showed only a 40 percent approval by the public of the court’s performance, which is down 20 points from two decades ago and a new low for that survey. Roberts then went on to say that the federal courts need to do a better job at spotting potential conflicts that should require judges to take themselves off cases involving companies in which they or members of their families own stock. The article pointed out that a recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that 131 judges participated in 685 such matters for a certain time period. Roberts’ excuse was that many likely were the result of “unintentional failures” in checking for financial conflicts. However, in asserting the “unintentional failures” defense, Roberts simply averred that the judges violated an ethics rule but he conveniently failed to mention that the 131 judges broke the law in doing so, and of course, weren’t prosecuted for breaking the law. https://www.wsj.com/articles/131-federal-judges-broke-the-law-by-hearing-cases-where-they-had-a-financial-interest-11632834421. The fact that Roberts conveniently omitted this very important fact speaks volumes about his lack of integrity and his propensity to sugar coat improprieties by federal judges…. Read More