Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Next Supreme Court Justice an Asian Am?


Fellow Asian Americans, aim high! Be bold! Help achieve a
common vision!

Supreme Court Justice Sandra O'Conner has just resigned.
President Bush could nominate a replacement as early as mid-July.
Could he be nominating the FIRST EVER ASIAN AM. candidate?

Not likely in this round. But it's not impossible, especially
if Chief Justice Rehnquist resigns also and President Bush will be
sending TWO names to the Senate! In that case, Bush will likely
nominate one conservative and one moderate. Many highly qualified
AsAms jurists are ideal replacements.

Our qualified jurists include 2 Circuit Court Justices: Ronald S.
W. Lew and A. Wallace Tashima; and 7 District Court Judges:
Denny Chin, Anthony W. Ishii, George H. King, Dana Makoto,
Susan Oki Mollway, Dana Makoto Sabraw and Robert A.
Takasugi. 80-20 has provided you with their brief bios earlier. Get
to know them from your own contacts..

Learning from the past, we don't just want any AsAm in high
government positions. Such complacency could BACKFIRE! For an
AsAm supreme court justice, we want the equivalent of a Thurgood
Marshall, not a Clarence Thomas.

Having a good AsAm Supreme Court Justice will mean winning
equal justice for AsAms ONCE & FOR ALL. Why? Any gross injustice
can always be appealed to the Supreme Court. Recall that it was the
Supreme Court that OKed the internment of Japanese Ams during
WWII.

In this email we highlight two more prominent AsAm jurists:
a. Harold Hongju Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, and
b. Anthony B. Ching, the first ever Solicitor General of Arizona.

Harold Honghiu Koh #####
He is married to Mary-Christy Fisher. They have two children in
Emily J.Y. Koh and William H. W. Koh. From '81 to '82, he clerked for
Supreme Court Justice Harry A Blackmum whom he greatly admires.
Then he went into private practice briefly. From, '83 to '85 he worked
For Reagan Administration's Dept. of Justice as Attorney-Adviser. In
'83 he also joined the Yale faculty. From '98 to '01 he worked for
Clinton Administration's State Dept. as the Assistant Secretary for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He is now the Dean of Yale Law
School. He was mentioned by the NY Times as a possible candidate for
the Supreme Court:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/politics/campaign/22kbench.html

Anthony B. Ching #####
He is the first ever Solicitor General of Arizona for 12 years. In
Arizona, a Solicitor General is in charge of all civil cases in which the
State is a party, while the Attorney General is in charge of the criminal
cases. Anthony argued two cases in the US Supreme Court in Graham
v Richardson and Perez v Campbell (both in 1971). Coincidentally,
Justice Sandra O'Connor was a state senator in Arizona before being
appointed to the Supreme Court by Reagan.

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