Peter Canellos

2 months ago | politico.com | Peter Canellos

The late senator fought to preserve the family’s political brand, but with RFK Jr. in Trump’s Cabinet, it’s hard to tell what that brand has become. President Donald Trump congratulates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he was sworn in as HHS secretary in the Oval Office at the White House on Thursday. | Alex Brandon/AP Peter S. Canellos is POLITICO managing editor for enterprise and author of the 2021 book, The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero.

2 months ago | yahoo.com | Peter Canellos

When the late Sen. Ted Kennedy hired a bus and took his three kids and 26 nieces and nephews on family-bondingraft trips, sailing adventures and pilgrimages to places like Valley Forge and Bunker Hill, he couldn’t have envisioned the scenes of recent weeks. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as health secretary established him, the family gadfly, as the effective standard-bearer of the next generation. The most potent liberal dynasty of seven decades went MAGA.

Feb 29, 2024 | politico.com | Peter Canellos

How the justices come down on these cases will go a long way toward determining whether they are partisan “Trump judges,” as the former president has boastfully called them — as if holding a lien on their support — or if they are more like McConnell has portrayed them: conservative-minded independent jurists committed to judicial restraint and interpreting the law without fear or favor.

Dec 1, 2023 | politico.com | Peter Canellos

This evolution has occurred for many reasons. Most of them trace more to the political exigencies of this era than the pursuit of justice. When O’Connor was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, in 1981, the judicial confirmation process had yet to become the partisan vise it is today. Presidents sought to choose broadly acceptable nominees, with at least equal attention to the nominee’s attainments as to their judicial ideology.

Dec 1, 2023 | yahoo.com | Peter Canellos

Sandra Day O’Connor came from a famously eclectic background, growing up on a Texas cattle ranch before becoming one of the first women to inhabit the rarefied precincts of Stanford Law School. Afterward, she made a career in electoral politics, rising to become the majority leader of the Arizona state Senate, cutting deals to pass legislation with the same cunning with which she roped cows. In posterity, O’Connor will be remembered as the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.