Information on socio-demographic background: the parents' occupation and educational background, age and ethnicity, and judicial measures, past detention and past residential placements, history of foster care and outpatient care was obtained from the institution file by means of a checklist.
The best measure of the future of a Supreme Court Justice, especially one, like Sotomayor, who is a sitting judge, is by studying her past judicial decisions.
Ms. Kagan has a glittering r?m?But it lacks the one qualification that every member of the current Supreme Court possesses: past judicial service.
Anyone who has dealt with past judicial oversight of the security services will doubt whether British judges will bring the spies under the lash of liberty.
The so-called N.R.A. score, which rates politicians on their friendliness to gun rights, has been an important factor in past judicial confirmations; it helped drive down Republican support for Justice Sotomayor, and could do the same for Ms. Kagan.
"Based on the professionalism of past judicial hearings on the July 5 massacre in Urumqi, it gives us confidence that the 20 members of the Uighur minority group just extradited from Cambodia would not be mistreated," it said.
Some of the states with the highest levels of campaign spending Texas, Louisiana and Alabama are also those whose judges are most criticised.In the past, judicial candidates were banned from discussing controversial legal or political issues on the campaign trail.
Because a legal principle exists, according to Dworkin, if the principle follows from the best moral and political interpretation of past judicial and legislative decisions in the relevant domain.
In the past, judicial discretion about sentences led to serious mistakes concerning dangerous criminals.
