Michael Dorf

Supreme Court nominees succeed or fail in the Senate based on three main criteria: professional qualifications, personal style, and ideology. John Roberts made it through because he scored very well on the first two counts, and there was enough doubt about his ideological commitments for roughly half the Democrats to take a gamble that he […]

Something odd is happening in the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, for the second time in two weeks, the Court delayed deciding whether or not to grant review in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. A federal appeals court — which included then-Judge, now Chief Justice, John Roberts — rejected a challenge to the military commissions the Bush administration […]

The nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court appears to bring together two recent trends in American politics: cronyism and stealth. However grudgingly, President Bush accepted responsibility for the role of federal authorities in bungling the Hurricane Katrina evacuation and relief efforts. One might have thought that such responsibility would include, at a minimum, […]

Once upon a time, a Republican president distrustful of big government and enthralled with markets nominated a seemingly conservative man named Roberts to the Supreme Court. The president hoped and expected that long after he left the Oval Office, Justice Roberts would continue to do the work of his conservative movement. But Justice Roberts bitterly […]

Liberals who see the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor as a giant step toward the overturning of Roe v. Wade are taking solace in two facts: For now, the U.S. Supreme Court seems to have five votes to uphold Roe; and even that precedent’s demise would leave abortion legal in states that do not outlaw […]