Supreme Court nominations: Dean Tacha, Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow co-write op-ed for Boston Globe

March 22, 2016 -- Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow and Pepperdine Law Dean Deanell Tacha have co-written a Boston Globe op-ed expressing concern about the decision by members of the U.S. Senate to block any Supreme Court nominations by President Obama in the wake of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The deans call upon the Senate to "play their constitutionally mandated role of providing advice and consent" in the Supreme Court nominations process. The op-ed notes that Dean Minow was appointed by President Obama to the board of the Legal Services Corporation and Dean Tacha was appointed by President Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

From "US needs a government of laws, not people"

Sometimes you don't value what you have until you experience its absence close up.

We each are deans of law schools; we each have seen, close up, nations without courts independent of political or partisan control. Plagued by conflict and distrust, countries without operating independent judiciaries struggle to earn local and international confidence. In the United States, we see how a fair, impartial, unbiased, and nonpolitical judiciary is central to American justice, permitting economic exchange and peaceful solutions to disagreements. This treasure depends upon the aspiration to maintain a government of laws, not men, focused on each case decided in light of the factual record and not political winds or personal preferences. And this treasure is in jeopardy at the highest level if the Senate refuses even to consider the president's nominee to be the next associate justice of the Supreme Court.

Continue reading at the Boston Globe website.