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Harvard law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe offered a spirited endorsement of Elena Kagan in a 2009 memo that noted the law school dean had the ability to persuade “a bunch of prima donnas to see things her way.” The memo (PDF), leaked to conservative blogger Ed Whelan, bluntly advised against the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to fill the seat of retiring Justice David H. Souter, a recommendation ignored by President Obama. The New York Times Caucus blog, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post all have stories. Tribe wrote that Kagan would be better able to persuade...

Senator Dianne Feinstein was absent from the Senate yesterday, so Senate Republicans had the votes to defeat the cloture motion on controversial Second Circuit nominee Myrna Perez, director of the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice. Had Republicans stuck together, they would have defeated the motion by a vote of 50 to 49. Instead, Senators Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski voted for cloture, giving Perez a 51-48 margin and paving the way for her confirmation. I’m reliably informed that Graham has not voted against cloture or against final confirmation of a single Biden judicial nominee. Indeed, Graham’s vote in committee yesterday...

Conservative firm CRC Public Relations helped lawyer and activist Ed Whelan through the process of promoting an unfounded theory about the sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, sources told Politico Friday. Whelan used Twitter to unveil between Tuesday and Thursday an unsubstantiated alibi for Kavanaugh in an attempt to exonerate him of the accusation from Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her at a party while the two were in high school in the 1980s. Whelan identified another former classmate of Kavanaugh in a series of tweets, in which he shared floor plans, maps and other...

Many of us wondered what the usually reliable Ed Whelan had up his sleeve the last few days, as he hinted that information would emerge that would force Dianne Feinstein to apologize to Brett Kavanaugh. Last night, as John reported, Whelan finally delivered — with a speculative and unsubstantiated theory of mistaken identity. More shockingly, Whelan named the person who might have conducted an assault on Christine Blasey Ford, without any evidence or corroboration. After reading it myself, I thought: Ed must have something more than this, right? As it turns out … nope. This morning, Whelan deleted the tweets...

Bombshell: A former law clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has made a bold claim on Twitter — that embattled SCOTUS nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be exonerated within a week, based on “compelling evidence.” POTUS Donald Trump’s second high court pick has been accused of sexual assault — from 36 years ago while in high school — by Palo Alto Prof. Christine Blasey Ford, who made the allegations on a letter allegedly passed to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in July. For his part, Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegations, even stating that he had no idea...

Who lived in this house? Chris Garrett, a Georgetown Prep classmate, friend, and football teammate of Brett Kavanaugh’s .Ed Whelan went on to say, “If you’re at a gathering of “four others” in someone’s home, you’d ordinarily think that the four others include the host who lives in the home. And that host would be the person least likely to act like a guest and most likely to use private areas of the house.” “If the gathering was at Garrett’s house and Garrett was there, then one of the “four others” wasn’t there.” Whelan continued. Ed Whelan concluded his tweetstorm...

Ed Whelan ‏ @EdWhelanEPPC Following Following @EdWhelanEPPC Okay, I’ll begin laying out some information concerning Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.

These tweets caught my attention last night, as Whelan is prominent in conservative legal circles and might know of matters afoot behind the scenes that the rest of us plebes aren’t aware of yet. He seems very confident that the Ford matter is about to blow up in Democrats’ faces somehow.

In his latest column, George Will charges that Senate Republicans have had an “incoherent response to the Supreme Court vacancy” that “is a partisan reflex in search of a justifying principle.” But it’s Will’s attack on Senate Republicans that lacks coherence: 1. Will purports to present five reasons that Senate Republicans have provided for their determination to keep the vacancy open until after the election. But his presentation of those supposed reasons isn’t at all fair. For starters, Will entirely omits what I understand to be the predominant reason: that filling the Scalia vacancy with an Obama pick would drive...

I’ve obtained a copy of an interesting letter that Harvard law professor Larry Tribe wrote to his protégé, President Barack Obama, in the immediate aftermath of Justice Souter’s announcement of his decision to retire from the Court. I will post a PDF of the letter shortly. [Update: Here’s the letter.] In the meantime, I’ll call attention, in this post and two or three others, to some of its highlights. The express purpose of Tribe’s letter is to urge that Obama nominate Elena Kagan to the Souter vacancy. But before making his affirmative case for Kagan, Tribe argues strongly against the...

One wonders how Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center managed to get a hold of a private letter sent to President Obama by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe advising him against nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, but be that as it may, its contents are quite interesting and show just how nakedly political Tribe’s view of a justice really is and also how little he thinks of Sotomayor. In the May 2009 letter (PDF link here), Tribe advises Obama to refrain from choosing Sotomayor because “she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think...

With the understanding that Harriet Miers’s Spring 1993 speech to the Executive Women of Dallas is just part of the evidence that has led me to conclude that she should withdraw her nomination, let me highlight the elements of that speech that I find disturbing. Much of the first ten pages I find unobjectionable in substance (though certainly not well composed). Indeed, Miers soundly criticizes “a shifting to the judicial system of the responsibility for making all of the hard decisions” and the unwillingness of political leaders to make these decisions: "My basic message here is that when you hear...

Only an indistinct portrait of the young John G. Roberts Jr. emerged in thousands of pages released... from the Supreme Court nominee's years in the Reagan White House. But the documents do provide a vivid reminder of the debates that consumed official Washington in those days. Some of the issues remain pertinent, while others are long forgotten. Anyone expecting the nearly 5,400 pages of documents, dating from late 1982 to mid-1986, to contain the key to the kind of Supreme Court justice that Judge Roberts would be is likely to be disappointed. Whether abortion opponents should be permitted to bury...