To other Supreme Court lawyers, Scalia’s questions show a troubling pattern. Rather than merely probing legal arguments, he has served as a “partisan cheerleader,” said Doug Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center in Washington, which supports the administration on health care and immigration.
CAC In the News
May 11, 2012
A study by the Constitutional Accountability Center found that the Chamber of Commerce had won 65 percent of its cases heard by the court under Chief Justice John Roberts, compared to 56 percent under former Chief Justice William Rehnquist (1986-2005) and just 43 percent of the cases that came during the Burger court (1969-1986).
May 10, 2012
Judith Schaeffer, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive think tank said: "With the Supreme Court as starkly divided ideologically as it is today, the stakes this November are quite high. On so many issues of critical importance, the Constitution truly is at a crossroads before the Court under Chief Justice John Roberts. That said, every presidential election is important to the future of the federal judiciary, given the President's constitutional responsibility to nominate Supreme Court Justices and lower court judges.”
May 9, 2012
“I think that generally the Court hasn’t looked at applications of Strickland, which sets forth the ineffective assistance of counsel test, as being new rules,” said Elizabeth B. Wydra, chief counsel for the Washington-based Constitutional Accountability Center, who wrote an amicus brief urging the Court to take up the case and rule in favor of retroactivity. “They are [seen as] applications of the existing ineffective assistance of counsel standard. So I think here, especially if you look at how the majority opinion in Padilla is written, which seems to assume the position will be retroactive, that is strong indication that Padilla did not announce a new rule, but instead was simply applying Strickland in a new context.”
May 6, 2012
Another friend-of-the-court brief filed in support of the defendant in the new case points out that the rights involved have a deep history. The brief by the Constitutional Accountability Center, based in Washington, cites the "landmark English Treason Act of 1696, which first affirmed a right of counsel, explicitly spoke of [c]ounsel learned in the law."