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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Court - Judge Diane Wood "Often Spars With Conservative Colleagues on the 7th Circuit"

From a lengthy story today in the Washington Post, reported by Peter Slevin:

CHICAGO -- The verbal sparring began quickly. Less than two minutes into the lawyer's argument, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Diane P. Wood launched the first question. A Chicago condominium board had repeatedly removed a mezuzah from a Jewish resident's door frame, and Wood viewed it as a violation of religious freedom.

To her right, Judge Frank H. Easterbrook disagreed. Firing his own questions, he suggested that the dispute over the small case containing Torah verses was rooted in nothing more than a condo association's effort to eliminate hallway clutter.

Back and forth they went during oral arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. It was a familiar dance, joined energetically by Judge Richard A. Posner, who most often aligns with his fellow Reagan appointee Easterbrook.

Wood's 14 years alongside Posner and Easterbrook, who often serve together as a panel of the circuit court, are being studied afresh as President Obama prepares to make his first nomination to the Supreme Court. Wood, described by associates as smart, progressive, steadfast and collegial, is a onetime colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago and is considered by many to be on the shortlist of potential replacements for retiring Justice David H. Souter.

Wood knows what it is like to duel two of the most formidable and prolific conservative jurists in the country, a key element of Obama's search as he tries to shift the dynamic of a court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Antonin Scalia. * * *

In a different case, Wood helped overturn a deportation order against a Ukrainian woman who showed up two hours late for a court hearing. The immigration judge said the woman, who was delayed while waiting for her interpreter, had missed her chance. Wood said she had a right to a hearing.

Wood also took a more expansive view in a case that targeted the Indiana General Assembly's opening prayer as too often overtly Christian.

Again on the losing side of a 2 to 1 decision, she objected to the court's ruling that four Indiana residents -- a Quaker, a Methodist and two Catholics -- had no standing to file suit because they did not connect the spending of tax dollars to a violation of the Constitution's establishment clause.

Wood drew on writings including the Federalist Papers and the State Department's religious freedom report. She noted James Madison's worries about unchecked legislatures and his comment that strong majorities can make minority rights "insecure." She said a careful reading of an opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. supported her view that the plaintiffs deserved their day in court.

See this ILB entry from May 13th on the condominium board case, Block v. Shoreline Towers. Here is the 23-page July 10, 2008 decision of the panel. Judge Wood's dissent runs from p. 7 to 23 and ends with a picture of a mezuzah. Here is a link to the oral argument from Feb. 20, 2008.

The case went before the entire 7th Circuit on May 13th. Listen to the oral argument here.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 16, 2009 09:34 AM
Posted to Courts in general