In a portion of a symposium reviewing the 2005-2006 U.S. Supreme Court term, Ken Starr talks about the new justices on the court, Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito, as well as cases reviewed by the Court in the first year of their tenure. Following his remarks he participates in a panel that talks about business cases from the last term and up-coming cases in the term starting on October 2, 2006. The panel answers questions from the audience.
Kenneth Starr served as Independent Counsel (1994-99) in the Whitewater probe which led to the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton.
Bio
Marcia Coyle
Washington Bureau Chief and U.S. Supreme Court Correspondent, The National Law Journal.
A lawyer as well as a journalist, Ms. Coyle has covered the Supreme Court for 19 years. She also regularly appears on PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Her work has earned national journalism awards, including the George Polk Award for legal reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for outstanding investigative reporting, the Scripps Howard Foundation Award for environmental reporting, and the American Judicature Society's Toni House Journalism Award for her career body of work covering courts and the justice system.
Douglas Kmiec
Professor Kmiec headed the Office of Legal Counsel for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He is the former dean and St. Thomas More Professor at The Catholic University of America Law School. For nearly two decades, he was a member of the law faculty at the University of Notre Dame, where he was also director of the Center on Law and Government.
He has been a White House Fellow, a Distinguished Fulbright Scholar on the Constitution (in Asia), and the inaugural Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the National Constitution Center. His published work includes four books on the American Constitution. He has also authored several legal treatises and related books, and hundreds of articles and essays.
David G. Savage
U.S. Supreme Court Correspondent, The Los Angeles Times.
Mr. Savage moved to the Times' Washington bureau to cover legal issues in 1986. Mr. Savage also pens a monthly column for the ABA Journal and is the author of the two-volume reference work, Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, published by Congressional Quarterly Press. In addition Turning Right: the Making of the Rehnquist Supreme Court, has been reprinted in an updated paperback version.
He has written chapters for several books on the Court, including most recently, A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court, in which he explores the surprising role of Justice Kennedy as the author of Lawrence v. Texas.
Kenneth W. Starr
Dean and Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law
Dean Kenneth Starr is the author of many law review articles and the popular book, First Among Equals: The Supreme Court in American Life. Prior to his deanship, he was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
In addition, he has served as counselor to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, Solicitor General of the United States, and independent counsel on the Whitewater matter. Dean Starr has argued 34 cases before the Supreme Court involving a wide range of governmental regulatory and constitutional issues of commercial importance. He clerked for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and presently teaches current constitutional issues.
Starr's argument that the Supreme Court should primarily focus on business and less on constitutional issues sounds ridiculous. Business issues are important to the function of government as well, however, the Supreme Court was created as a part of the system of checks and balances. Starr appears to want everyone to remain hushed and draw attention away from issues of executive abuses of power and downplay the Supreme Court's role in governing, perhaps implying we need only one voice of leadership in government.