High Court

ATLANTIC CITY - New Jersey's chief justice didn't opine on the extraordinary upheaval and political controversies in the state's court system Friday during his annual "State of the Judiciary" speech at the state's bar association convention. But the new president of the New Jersey State Bar Association most certainly did, in an interview slamming as "borderline unethical" Republican Gov. Christie's recent criticism of one judge's ruling. In introducing the chief justice, bar president Kevin P. McCann, a Democrat with a practice in Bridgeton, told the gathering that judges should not be "looking over their shoulder" or "second-guessed by someone else.

and Angela Couloumbis INQUIRER HARRISBURG BUREAU PITTSBURGH - State Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin, stripped of her duties, is vowing to fight the criminal charges filed against her Friday by Allegheny County prosecutors. The charges involve the use of taxpayer-paid staff for political campaigning. Melvin is facing nine criminal counts, including theft of services and conspiracy to tamper with evidence - all in connection with allegations she used her state-funded staff to perform campaign work.

Questions and comments made by several justices during last week's oral arguments suggested the Supreme Court might validate that portion of a controversial Arizona law that would allow local police to question persons suspected of other crimes about their immigration status. The court wouldn't consider the likelihood that such questioning might violate the questioned person's civil rights because that is the subject of separate litigation. The justices are limited to ruling on the constitutionality of specific issues brought before the high court, so they also didn't comment on the morality of the Arizona law and others like it either proposed or enacted in other states.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed convicted murderer and onetime counterculture guru Ira Einhorn a legal defeat yesterday when justices denied, without comment, his request that the high court seize control of his legal odyssey. The decision clears the way for Einhorn, who was convicted in absentia in 1993, to seek a new trial in Common Pleas Court. On Wednesday, Common Pleas Court Judge D. Webster Keogh is scheduled to rule on Einhorn's request for a new trial in the 1977 death of his onetime girlfriend Holly Maddux.

The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to examine the rights of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans forced into mass detention camps during World War II. The case is the first of a series now pending in which Japanese-Americans seek monetary damages for the internment, which was ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and defended as a military necessity. Specifically, the high court agreed to review a request by the Reagan administration to block a 1983 lawsuit from coming to trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

No matter who is elected to the two open slots, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is on its way up. Of course, it has only one direction to go, since the court hit rock-bottom a while back and stayed there with the conviction and impeachment last year of Justice Rolf Larsen. And he is not the only justice criticized - indeed, the entire court has suffered from a reputation for inaction and lapses in, if you will, judgment. Vacancies would be improvements over Larsen and retired Justice Nicholas Papadakos.

Is empathy a desirable quality in a U.S. Supreme Court justice? President Obama said he was searching for it. But as a qualification for a jurist, it gives conservatives the willies and can produce mixed results. We expect judges to resist empathy and impose the law evenhandedly. We are appropriately outraged when a judge goes easy on a defendant with whom he identifies - the suburban white kid, say, who gets community service, whereas his urban black counterpart goes off to jail.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan has given the Senate Judiciary Committee a welcome opportunity to make this week's hearings on her Supreme Court nomination a substantive discussion of legal issues and judicial philosophy - and a departure from the charade they have become in recent years. Kagan has opened the door to such a discussion with her own words. In a 1995 Harvard Law Review article, she called modern confirmation hearings a "farce" notable for their "vacuity," in which "senators do not insist that any nominee reveal what kind of Justice she would make, by disclosing her views on important legal issues.

Lost in the relief over the seeming resolution of the status of indicted state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin is the illegality of the court's suspension of her and its threat of further legal action. Which is the greater threat to the rule of law: a single justice who may have mixed politics with state business, or a court that ignores the constitutional structures voters put in place to rein it in? Last week, a grand jury in Pittsburgh handed up charges that Melvin improperly used her staff for political activities on state time.

ATLANTIC CITY - New Jersey's chief justice didn't opine on the extraordinary upheaval and political controversies in the state's court system Friday during his annual "State of the Judiciary" speech at the state's bar association convention. But the new president of the New Jersey State Bar Association most certainly did, in an interview slamming as "borderline unethical" Republican Gov. Christie's recent criticism of one judge's ruling. In introducing the chief justice, bar president Kevin P. McCann, a Democrat with a practice in Bridgeton, told the gathering that judges should not be "looking over their shoulder" or "second-guessed by someone else.

PITTSBURGH - State Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin, stripped of her duties, vowed to fight the criminal charges filed against her Friday and said she had no plans to quit Pennsylvania's highest court. "My faith will see me through this," Melvin said outside the Municipal Court Building. She denied what she called "these politically motivated charges. " The charges brought by Allegheny County prosecutors involve use of taxpayer-paid staff for political campaigning - and are rooted in evidence that emerged in the case against Melvin's sister, State Sen. Jane Orie, convicted in March of similar charges.

Joan Orie Melvin's trajectory as a jurist had been ambitiously, relentlessly celestial - from Pittsburgh city magistrate in 1985 to a seat on the state's highest court by 2010. But on Friday, her plummet was precipitous. Again, she appeared in Pittsburgh City Court, but this time on the other side of the bar. Such a fall was particularly dramatic for a woman whose life had been one of achievements and firsts. Melvin, 56, of Marshal, Pa., grew up as one of nine competitive, sports-oriented siblings whose first names all begin with J. Raised by a doctor and an extroverted homemaker mother, all became successes: five lawyers, two cardiologists, an educator, and a human resources manager.

Rights at Risk The Limits of Liberty in Modern America By David K. Shipler Alfred A. Knopf. 400 pp. $28.95 Best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winner David Shipler believes America has "lost its way" since 9/11. "Constitutional rights are routinely overwhelmed," he says in his new book, Rights at Risk, "largely out of sight in criminal courts and interrogation rooms, in offices of prosecutors and immigration bureaucrats, and in schools. " While we talk about freedom and liberty a lot, there has been little opposition as the Patriot Act empowered the federal government to ask store owners what books we buy and what videos we rent, and to compile these and our political preferences in government files.

Immigrant millionaire Stephen Girard's 1830 will has benefited generations of Pennsylvanians: students at Girard College, the free North Philadelphia boarding school his legacy still supports, and the lawyers who have been fighting over the will and Girard Estate funds since his death. The latest challenge will go before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday. Lawyers for the Girard Estate, which is administered by the Philadelphia Board of City Trusts, are fighting to protect its state tax exemptions.

Questions and comments made by several justices during last week's oral arguments suggested the Supreme Court might validate that portion of a controversial Arizona law that would allow local police to question persons suspected of other crimes about their immigration status. The court wouldn't consider the likelihood that such questioning might violate the questioned person's civil rights because that is the subject of separate litigation. The justices are limited to ruling on the constitutionality of specific issues brought before the high court, so they also didn't comment on the morality of the Arizona law and others like it either proposed or enacted in other states.

Taking their long-running battle to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Arizona and the federal government are set to square off over the state's bitterly disputed 2010 law designed to crack down on illegal immigration. Among the law's most contested provisions are expanded powers for local police to demand proof of the immigration status of anyone they stop, and to arrest, without a warrant, those they suspect of being here illegally. Advocates for immigrants say such powers invite discriminatory racial profiling based on skin color and foreign accents.

Philadelphia should cap off its overhaul of its court system by creating indicting grand juries and trying fugitive defendants in absentia, a veteran former prosecutor said Monday. In a double-barreled presentation to a state Senate advisory panel, Walter M. Phillips Jr. said the moves would crack down on witness intimidation and send a strong signal encouraging defendants to show up for court. Phillips detailed his proposals at the latest session of a volunteer panel of judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers, academics, and other experts established to recommend changes to the Philadelphia courts in response to an Inquirer investigative series, "Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied.