Harry Reid's recent “nuclear” detonation left many conservatives in high dudgeon over "tyranny of the majority." I recently argued that this contradicts the widely-held view that America is under the thumb of a corrupt bipartisan ruling class, viz.: (a) authoritarian reign by largely leftist oligarchic bureaucratic, judicial and media elite minorities over what President Nixon was once ridiculed for calling the "silent majority"; and (b) illegitimate domination by powerful

My newest piece at the New York Post starts this way: President Obama’s timing could have been better. Only two weeks ago in Texas, at a fundraiser, he bragged about “remaking the courts.” Obama told the audience: “In addition to the Supreme Court, we’ve been able to nominate and confirm judges of extraordinary quality all across the country on federal benches. We’re actually, when it comes to the district court, matching the pace of previous presidents. When it comes to the

My newest piece at the New York Post starts this way: President Obama’s timing could have been better. Only two weeks ago in Texas, at a fundraiser, he bragged about “remaking the courts.” Obama told the audience: “In addition to the Supreme Court, we’ve been able to nominate and confirm judges of extraordinary quality all across the country on federal benches. We’re actually, when it comes to the district court, matching the pace of previous presidents. When it comes to th

My piece at Politico starts this way: Think that attending a top university and graduating at the top of the class is the key to your success? Not if you’re headed for a federal judgeship. In fact, today the most accomplished candidates for the bench are the most likely to be rejected. And this phenomenon has only gotten worse with the quality of America’s judges in marked decline. The evidence of so-called dumbing down is striking: Tracking federal judge appointments over

The video that runs about an hour is available here. The C-SPAN intro is not completely accurate so you might want to skip the first 30 seconds. I would have rewritten it as this: John Lott talked about his book, Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench, in which he argues that partisan politicians don’t like to confirm smart judges from the other political party because they’re afraid that smart judges have the ability to influence othe

My piece at Politico starts this way: Think that attending a top university and graduating at the top of the class is the key to your success? Not if you’re headed for a federal judgeship. In fact, today the most accomplished candidates for the bench are the most likely to be rejected. And this phenomenon has only gotten worse with the quality of America’s judges in marked decline. The evidence of so-called dumbing down is striking: Tracking federal judge appointments over t

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way: The Senate Judiciary committee will vote on either Wednesday or Thursday whether to confirm Robert Wilkins, President Obama’s nominee to the prestigious D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals -- the court often referred to after the Supreme Court as the “second highest court” in the country. President Obama has spared little rhetoric in threatening Republicans should they dare defeat or delay Wilkins’ nomination. When Wilkins was nominat

CFJ’s brief in McCutcheon v. FEC was authored by Emory Law School’s Supreme Court Advocacy Project and CFJ President Curt Levey. A PDF copy

Today the Supreme Court hears oral argument in the biggest campaign finance case since Citizens United, and the Committee for Justice has we