Letter from America — September 1993 The Rise of Clinton, the Fall of the Democrats, the Scandal of the Media

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Barber

THE NEWS FROM AMERICA IS (WHAT ELSE COULD IT BE?) BILL Clinton – America's first first-name-only-please President, informality and accessibility being hallmarks of democratic populism in the 1990s. It might seem as if this is the roller-coaster presidency: if you do not like Clinton's bad (good) reputation today, just wait a month and you can be sure that things will have turned upside down. When I started this piece in the spring, he was way, way down; today just a few months later, following a successful Japanese trip (his weak rivals in the G-7 group made him look good), his two successful judicial appointments (Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the Supreme Court and Louis J. Freeh to the FBI), his paper-thin but indispensable budget victory in the Congress, and his shepherding of the historic Israeli-Palestinian peace protocol, he's looking good. By the time you read this, however, he's likely to be down again, or perhaps down but once again up. His political career has been on a rollercoaster from the start and the media seem determined to keep him and the country rocking — and rolling.

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Diana Majury

In this paper, Diana Majury looks at the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent s.15 decision, R. v. Kapp, in a preliminary exploration of the different understandings of equality she sees operating in three different sites (the Supreme Court, equality advocates, and the general public). She looks at the first two sites simultaneously by offering her equality advocate’s critique of the Kapp decision, outlining where the decision falls short of the substantive equality that equality advocates have been theorizing and promoting. She then looks at media responses to the decision, responses that almost unanimously present a formal equality understanding of equality. Recognizing that media coverage provides only a very limited and partial window on public perceptions, the media coverage of Kapp nonetheless raises the spectre that the general public understands equality only to mean formal equality. This conclusion highlights the importance of Rose Vyovodic’s work in combining equality and public education and the need for that work to be continued and expanded.Dans cet article, Diana Majury examine le récent jugement R. c. Kapp de la Cour Suprême du Canada en rapport avec l’article 15 pour faire une exploration préliminaire des compréhensions diverses de l’égalité qu’elle constate être en jeu dans trois lieux différents (la Cour Suprême, chez les défenseurs de l’égalité et chez le grand public). Elle examine les deux premiers lieux simultanément en présentant sa critique du jugement Kapp en tant que défenseure de l’égalité, exposant en quoi le jugement n’atteint pas l’égalité de fond au sujet de laquelle théorisent et que préconisent les défenseurs de l’égalité. Puis elle examine les réactions médiatiques au jugement, réactions qui présentent presque unanimement une compréhension d’égalité comme égalité formelle. Tout en reconnaissant que la couverture médiatique ne présente qu’une fenêtre très limitée et partielle sur les perceptions du public, la couverture médiatique de Kapp laisse tout de même pressentir que le grand public ne conçoit l’égalité que dans le sens d’égalité formelle. Cette conclusion fait ressortir l’importance de l’oeuvre de Rose Vyovodic qui combinait égalité et éducation du public et le besoin que cette oeuvre se poursuive et grandisse.


1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 736-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malvina Halberstam

In United States v. Alvarez-Machain, the Supreme Court sustained the jurisdiction of a U.S. court to try a Mexican national, charged with various counts of conspiracy, kidnaping and the murder of a U.S. drug enforcement agent in Mexico, even though his presence in the United States was the result of abduction rather than extradition pursuant to the Extradition Treaty between the United States and Mexico. The Court did not hold, as widely reported in the media, that the Treaty permits abduction, that abduction is legal, or that the United States had a right to kidnap criminal suspects abroad. On the contrary, the Court acknowledged that the abduction may have been a violation of international law. It stated, “Respondent and his amici may be correct that respondent’s abduction was ’shocking’ and that it may be in violation of general international law principles.”


Author(s):  
Peter McCormick

This essay traces the genesis of the Supreme Court of Canada under the Supreme Court Act of 1875, and the appointment procedure as described in it. The essay argues that the widening of the pool, where consultation for judicial appointments is made, has resulted in the appointment of persons with diverse credentials. The author describes how a reformed procedure for appointments involves the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice consulting various Chief Justices, law school deans, and provincial justice ministers to solicit names of potential appointees. The Canadian experience demonstrates variations in appointment mechanisms for broad-based consultation even in the absence of a commission model. The author, however, rues that most innovations in the appointments process have been short-lived, with a general shift to a more secretive process for appointments.


Author(s):  
Suhrith Parthasarathy

This essay is an overview of the use of comparative law in the NJAC Case, and offers a critique of the Supreme Court’s analysis of comparative law in judicial appointments. The essay argues that the Supreme Court adopted an isolationist approach by shunning international experience from fifteen countries cited before it by the Union of India to drive home the point that executive presence in judicial appointments does not, by itself, impinge upon judicial independence. The author contests the Supreme Court’s cursory dismissal of relevant international experience on the ground that India, with its peculiar set of circumstances cannot replicate the experiences of other nations in judicial appointments. The author argues that this is self-serving and the judgment would have been better served by a surer grasp of comparative law and its rationales.


Author(s):  
Suchindran B.N.

This essay is a critical analysis of the dynamics of executive-judiciary relations in judicial appointments from 1950 to 1973. It serves as a primer for the appointments made to the Supreme Court from 1950–73, the supersessions that were apprehended but did not come about, and generally, what weighed with the judges as well as the executive while making appointments in the years immediately after the Constitution came into force. The essay traverses the historical journey of appointments to the Supreme Court from the tenure of the first Chief Justice of India, Justice H.J. Kania, to the appointment of Justice R.S. Sarkaria in 1973. It provides insights, and in some cases, hitherto unknown facts about the factors that prompted the appointment of certain justices to the Court. The essay also documents the gradual incursion that the executive had begun to make in judicial appointments in the latter half of the 1960s.


2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-221
Author(s):  
Brian Sloan

THE media were unsurprisingly interested when the Supreme Court considered the case of a poverty-stricken New Age traveller turned multi-millionaire whose former wife appeared years after divorce to claim a share of his subsequently acquired wealth (Vince v Wyatt [2015] UKSC 14). The case also raised an important point of legal principle.


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