This weekend, after I realized that a google search didn't produce a list of liberal/progressive jurists, unlike the conservatives who have extensive lists, I challenged the Kos community to produce the list on our own. I'm hoping that this diary with a good number of recommendations will begin this important project. We as a movement need to know who the well-educated legal defenders of the leftist view of government are so when we take back the White House we become their advocates!
I'm not a lawyer, and I couldn't name more than a dozen Circuit Court judges if my life depended on it, so I'd like to call on the extensive legal knowledge in this community to help identify the next Thurgood Marshall, Brennan, Douglas...our liberal versions of Alito.
Included should be federal and state jurists, politicians, and academics. ABILITY TO GET CONFIRMED SHOULD NOT BE A FACTOR.
Seems to me any list has to include:
-Stephen Reinhardt (9th Circuit Court of Appeals)...Pledge of Allegiance case among others
-Henry Edwards (Past Chief Judge, D.C. Circuit)
-Ralph Neas (President, People for the American Way)
[More below]
-Mario Cuomo (Former Governor, State of New York)
-Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law Professor)
-Elaine Jones (Past President, NAACP Legal Defense Fund)
-Anthony Romero (Director, ACLU)
-Mary Frances Berry (Past Chairwoman of U.S. Civil Rights Commission & University of Pennsylvania Professor)
I'd eventually like to turn this diary into a dKosopedia entry, so any links to bios, pictures and/or references to important judicial opinions/court cases/legal opinions would be great bonuses. But for now just names would suffice.