Precedt Precedent News Today

Change the ukrainian constitution. thats not a very good preced t precedent. but compared to all the alternative, which i think would have been, and we saw bits after pieces of what might have been just a couple of days ago, a real civil war, its the best we have to work with. and of course, not surprisingly to me, having worked with russia for the last several years, the day after, theres ambiguity about how the russians interpret it and how the forces on the ground interpret it. it wont happen...

Wrongly decided? >> i absolutely said, when i stepped up to the podium as an advocate, i thought that the u.s. government should prevail in that case and the statute should be upheld. i wanted to make a clear distinction between my views as an advocate and any i might have as a judge. i do think citizens united is settled law going forward. no question its precedent and entitled to all of the weight that the precedent usually gets and i want to make clear as with any of my cases as an advocate, ...

Precedent are eroded or if the factual circumstances that were critical to why the precedent -- to the original decision, if those change. but unless one can sort of point to one of those reasons for reversing a precedent, the operating presumption of our legal system is that a judge respects precedent, and i think thats an enormously important principle of the legal system, that one defers to prior justices or prior judges who have decided something and that its not enough, even if you think so...

Arguments right here in this committee that this is it a terrible case that upset 70 years of precedent, and ive heard all of these arguments and theyre just inaccurate and thats what were establishing here. when president obama criticized the citizens united decision in the state of the union address with the supreme court justices sitting there, he said it would allow foreign corporations to fund american elections. others have said the same thing. do you agree that this case involved an ameri...

As the court said in citizens united, no other case held that congress prohibited independent contributions based on the identity of the speaker. austin was the aberration, the exception, the break in the courts consistent pattern of precedence. and mr. chairman, im going to need about 30 seconds more to finish. >> 30 seconds more. >> many folks have attacked the decision saying it is a prime example of quote conservative judicial activism unquote because it ignored precedent by overruling austi...

Are different. rural states have different problems than large metropolitan states do. i mean, we probably have as many as 30 million people living in cities where the issue of gangs is a huge question. so heres my question to you. why is a 5-4 decision in two quick cases -- why does it throw out literally decades of precedent in the hiller case in your mind? why do these two cases become settled law? >> senator feinstein because the court decided them as they did, and once the court decide a ca...