Legal Scholars Favor Appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as next Supreme Court Justice
July 15, 2009
Direct link full-size video with B-rollATLANTA - Georgia State University professors and legal scholars Eric Segall, L. Lynn Hogue and Neil Kinkopf support Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice and first Hispanic woman to be nominated to the nation's highest court.
As Sotomayor goes through the confirmation hearings process in Washington, D.C., watch what Segall says about Sotomayor and the controversy surrounding her appointment in the video and B-roll here:
Hogue and Kinkopf were among the 1,200 legal scholars who signed an open letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, and ranking minority member Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., urging the confirmation of Sotomayor.
Since 1991, Segall has taught federal courts and constitutional law at Georgia State University. Previously, he worked for the Department of Justice, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and he clerked for Judge Albert J. Henderson with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Judge Charles A. Moye Jr. with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Hogue joined Georgia State in 1982. He teaches constitutional law, the conflict of laws and American constitutional history. He has argued cases before the Georgia Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Hogue served 21 years as an army lawyer and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel from the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General's Corps. Hogue played a role in facilitating the professional censure of President Bill Clinton for misconduct in the Jones v. Clinton case.
Kinkopf teaches constitutional law, legislation and legislation clinic at Georgia State. Previously, he was a domestic policy specialist with the Clinton/Gore campaign and Presidential transition. He worked at the Department of Justice as special assistant to the Attorney General and in the office of legal counsel. He counseled then Sen. Joseph Biden for the President Clinton impeachment trial in 1999, after which he joined the faculty at the College of Law.
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Renee DeGross Valdes
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