Critics of the gun control movement say its advocacy groups are capitalizing on grief by courting vulnerable victims and families.
The highly political nature of the election, or reëlection, of the court's conservative justices, between 2007 and 2013, and the highly political nature of their rejection of the traditional recusal rule have for half a decade made the court vulnerable to charges that it has become a political body.
While there may be sound reasons for this – five African countries have referred themselves to the court, for example, and 33 African states have ratified the Rome statute that established the ICC, making Africa the largest continental bloc – the perception that it targets Africans exclusively has left the court vulnerable.
Joanne Doroshow, a public interest lawyer, has gathered people injured by defective products as well as negligent medical procedures to testify and lobby a callous Congress often on the verge of usurping the state courts and these vulnerable victims' access to justice.
"It's the court's most vulnerable point," Professor Lazarus said of the decision to hear or turn down a petition.
But political appointees — including Mr. Barron, Mr. Koh and even Mr. Johnson — criticized the reasoning of the appeals court ruling as vulnerable to reversal and argued that the administration should not abandon its respect for the laws of war.
Cris McCurley, a family lawyer who specialises in representing black and minority ethnic women in cases involving extreme domestic violence, said holding hearings in open court could stop vulnerable women taking part in hearings.
Longer journeys would "have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable court users...victims in domestic violence cases are under great emotional and financial strain...requiring such vulnerable claimants to travel for over two hours to court would make an already stressful situation even harder".
Usually, Hingis fancies herself too clever on the court to be vulnerable, but after Venus Williams drained her during a three-set semifinal at the United States Open and Serena Williams finished her off in the final last year, her increasingly fragile confidence was cracked in half.
That lower court decision is vulnerable.
