On Her Way Out, Barbara Boxer Flips Out

In the late 1970s, President Carter and a Democratic Congress nearly doubled the number of judges on the court. Carter’s appointees included “liberal lion” Stephen Reinhardt, who in recent years struck down Arizona’s “English-only” constitutional provision and California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. Harry Pregerson, another Carter appointee, held that the federal government can’t interfere with state laws legalizing medical marijuana and informed the Senate during his confirmation hearing that between the law and his conscience, “I would follow my conscience.”… During the next 30 years, the 9th Circuit would continually draw the right’s enmity with high-profile, left-wing decisions. Among them: It ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional for its use of the phrase “under God,” that individuals have no constitutional right to own guns and that state laws banning assisted suicide violate the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court overturned each…. In 1992, it waged an all-night duel with the Supreme Court over the execution of convicted murderer Robert Harris, issuing stay after stay, each one reversed by Supreme Court justices until they ordered the 9th Circuit to stop. Between 2006 and 2009, the 9th Circuit threw out the capital sentence of convicted murderer Fernando Belmontes three times, with each decision overturned by the Supreme Court. In 2011, when the Supreme Court once more reversed the 9th Circuit on a capital punishment case, it accused the appeals court of exhibiting “judicial disregard” for “sound and established principles” of law—which is about as catty as it gets in the marbled hallways of the federal appellate judiciary.