A Dec. 23 court order gives justices an incentive to explain why they will or won't participate in a controversial case.
The Court doesn’t choose its justices. The people choose the Court’s justices by electing them.
N.C. Supreme Court Justices Tamara Barringer and Phil Berger Jr. confirmed late Friday afternoon that they will take part in a high-profile case involving two challenged amendments to the N.C. Constitution. In separate orders, the two Republican justices denied motions seeking their removal from the case called NAACP v. Moore. The orders mark an official...
Democrats on the state Supreme Court will not use their narrow 4-3 majority to forcibly remove two GOP justices from a critical case dealing with state constitutional amendments. In an order released without fanfare just before Christmas, the court has in essence preserved the status quo. It has preserved a practice that’s been in place...
If the state Supreme Court decides to remove two Republican justices from hearing a high-profile case involving voter ID, the court also should remove Democratic Justice Anita Earls. That’s according to a new motion filed Wednesday in the case. It’s the latest development in a legal dispute Carolina Journal has covered at ExtremeInjustice.com. “[I]f this...
A note from the editor: When Carolina Journal Investigative Political Analyst Dallas Woodhouse pitched this groundbreaking story to me, and Carolina Journal publisher Amy Cooke, it frankly seemed unbelievable and unlikely. His scoop was that that the 4-3 Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court was considering forcibly removing two Republican colleagues, putting a thumb...
An involuntary recusal, in the teeth of a Justice’s own judgment that recusal is not necessary, is in effect a public declaration that the Justice has engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. It is difficult to imagine a procedure better calculated to poison the deliberations of this body and its ability to...
As the N.C. Supreme Court considers whether to boot two Republican justices from a high-profile case involving voter ID, three former chief justices are weighing in. Without making a specific recommendation, the former chiefs nonetheless tout the benefits of the system the court has used throughout its history. That system relies on individual justices to...
A retired UNC law school constitutional expert says forced removal of Supreme Court justices from consideration of a case would be “particularly dangerous.” John Orth, William Rand Kenan Jr. professor of law emeritus, makes that argument in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Friday morning in the case of NC NAACP v. Moore. The state Supreme Court...
State House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, wrote this week in a major national newspaper about an attempted “subversion of the will of the people” involving North Carolina’s Supreme Court. The Wall Street Journal published Moore’s letter Sunday with the headline “In North Carolina, let the people rule.” Moore responded to the national news outlet’s coverage...
Left-wing activist plaintiffs have filed another motion to block a Republican Supreme Court justice from hearing a high-profile election-related lawsuit. But they lost one of their lawyers along the way. The lawyer, a Democrat and former state solicitor general, asked the Supreme Court to be removed from the case roughly 70 minutes before the controversial...
