On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, restoring the rights taken away by the Supreme Court in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. One year to the day, a new movement is afoot to correct the Court.

As you may know, People For the American Way has taken the lead in supporting Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to serve as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. With a busy July ahead, including hearings set to begin on the 13th, I need your help.

It is a shame that we women cannot be supportive enough of each other to be able to claim that we have been able to elect a women to the highest or at least to the second highest office of government in the United States. Shelly Mandell the president of the Los Angeles NOW chapter, introduced Sarah Palin at a political activity in California.

Radar magazine has a great interview this week with Linda Greenhouse, who recently retired after 30 years of covering the Supreme Court for The New York Times.

Here's more video from Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric — in which Couric asks her to name Supreme Court decisions she disagrees with and she lapses into confounded silence after naming only one, Roe v. Wade.

The United State Supreme Court stopped the execution of Troy Davis today, less than two hours before he was supposed to be executed by lethal injection following a decision of the Georgia Supreme Court, that upheld Davis’ conviction for the murderer of an off duty police officer in Savannah, Georgia in August of 1989.

August was a wild month for me. I went from an incredible trip to Beijing to watch my son David compete in the Olympics as a member of the U.S. Rowing Team and then almost immediately to Denver, where People For the American Way hosted a forum on the Supreme Court and the 2008 elections.  Here’s a picture from the forum, which was really quite successful.

Interesting reading today:

www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the _most_activist_court

      current Supreme Court's record - and see related articles list on right

      (I got this from a classmate in the courts class - RJ?)

http://link.latimes.com/r/FGRUKJ/ORYKH/HRSKAD/MFIO/7R29B/D5/t 

      Sup. Ct.:  Gitmo detainees can challenge detention

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-briefs12-2008jun12,0,538997...

      British anti-terrorism bill advances

www.latimes.com/news/la-me-kozinski12-2008jun12,0,4429841.st...

      Kozinski, Chief of 9th Circuit Court, recuses self from porn case after personal porn

Each state has its own courts, then you have the federales.  California once had three levels of court, now just two:  the municipal courts were subsumed into the superior courts.  Then you have the State Supreme Court.  We also have a circuit court in San Francisco, but that one is federal.  Beyond the circuit courts, you only find the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.  Let's see...there is also the difference in civil and criminal cases, but I think those exist side-by-side in all the above courts.  I'm fuzzy on that.  Also, small claims courts exist at the local level;  they are for civil cases only and have a cap on maximum judgments.  To request larger judgments, you have to go to superior court.