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Nina Morrison, a senior lawyer at the Innocence Project, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday after President Joe Biden nominated her in December to become a federal judge in Brooklyn.
Senate Republicans attacked Morrison, whose legal career has focused on exonerating people who have been wrongly convicted through DNA evidence, calling her a backer of "soft on crime" polices that have fueled a rise in murders.
Citing rising murder rates in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said:
Morrison had made "a business of supporting these soft-on-crime prosecutors who release violent criminals"
Questioning her past support for progressive prosecutors who have adopted policies that involved declining to prosecute certain non-violent crimes, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana asked:
"Do you think judges should be able to do that, say I don't agree with this criminal statute and I'm not going to hear cases for any of them?"
Since joining the Innocence Project in 2002, Morrison has helped free about 30 wrongly convicted people from prison or death row, the White House said.
The three-days-a-week office return plan is picking up steam among large law firms.?Vinson & Elkins?this week told attorneys they are expected to work on site at least three days a week, beginning March 1.
That announcement came a week after?Kirkland & Ellis?informed ?all employees that they should work from the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays as of March 29–a move legal industry experts said might prompt other firms to follow suit.?
Ropes & Gray?also has an office return policy that puts attorneys in the office three days a week, starting next month.?Norton Rose Fulbright?is also in the three-days-on-site club as of this week, with personnel expected in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and another day of their choice.?
Mintz Levin has scheduled its office reopening for April 4 and has told attorneys they should aim to spend 60% of their time on site. Firms have also had to consider whether to require vaccines and mask wearing to enter the office.
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5th Circuit Judge James Ho delivered a speech to the Federalist Society chapter at Georgetown University’s law school arguing that the school shouldn’t banish new faculty member Ilya Shapiro over controversial Twitter posts questioning the nomination of a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ho, nominated to the 5th Circuit by former President Donald Trump, advocated that the school should let Shapiro air his ideas on campus and give detractors the opportunity to counter them:
“If you disagree with Ilya Shapiro—if you think his understanding of the law is absurd, if you think his vision for our country is awful—here’s what I say: Bring him onto campus—and beat him!”
Ho also defended Shapiro’s position that race shouldn’t be considered in Biden’s high court choice. Biden's approach itself perpetuates racism, he claimed, in part by suggesting the only way for a person of a particular race to get the job is to “rig the rules in their favor.”
Walter Dellinger, a fixture of Washington and academic legal circles who was a longtime Duke University law professor, a partner at law firm O'Melveny & Myers and former acting U.S. solicitor general, has died, the law school confirmed Wednesday. He was 80.
As an O'Melveny partner, Dellinger weighed in on two major gay rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court -- Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a Texas law that criminalized private same-sex sexual activity, and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which led to California's ban on gay marriage being struck down.
Dellinger in a Feb. 3 New York Times op-ed backed President Joe Biden's?pledge ?to nominate a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, writing that considering a nominee's background and demographic characteristics "stems from bedrock principles of democratic governance."
Duke University School of Law dean Kerry Abrams praised Dellinger saying:
"Walter Dellinger was a lion of the law, the legal profession, and legal education."
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