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Supreme Court Nominees Should Disclose Views On Constitutional Issues, USA Today Opinion Piece States
One thing that "has been conspicuously absent" from the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "substance," Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, writes in a USA Today opinion piece. According to Turley, "The vast majority of questions and answers remained on a shallow and predictable level where Sotomayor did little more than describe current doctrines and case law -- avoiding disclosures of her own views." He continues, "What is most striking is how Sotomayor"s statements were virtually identical to both her conservative and liberal predecessors," including her comments that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are "the precedent of the court."Turley writes, "The content-light character in these hearings is largely the product of the "Ginsburg rule" -- named after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who refused to answer questions in her 1993 confirmation hearing about any case or matter upon which she might later vote." According to Turley, "Later nominees for both parties have relied on the Ginsburg rule to turn the hearings into prolonged photo-ops for senators, who largely ask wafer-thin questions to solicit largely scripted answers." The rule "allows nominees to get by with meaningless sound bites that promise to respect precedent, the Framers [of the Constitution] and collegiality in general," he adds. Furthermore, it "tells the public nothing about a nominee"s philosophy or purpose before giving her life tenure on the world"s most powerful court," Turley writes.According to Turley, there is a "simple solution to returning substance to the confirmation process: End the Ginsburg rule by insisting that nominees answer questions about their specific views on constitutional rights." Although "the current system works well for presidents, nominees and senators," it "does little for the public or the system of justice," he writes (Turley, USA Today, 7/16).
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Iowa's Criminal HIV Transmission Law Examined
A recent court decision in Black Hawk County, Iowa where a 34-year-old HIV-positive man was sentenced to 25 years in prison and a lifetime of parole for not informing a sexual partner of his status, might lead to a national discussion on state criminal transmission laws, the Iowa Independent reports. Nick Clayton Rhoades pleaded guilty to criminal transmission of HIV, a felony in Iowa, although he did not transmit the virus to his partner. Under state law, "in direct contradiction to its formal title," transmission is not required for a person to be prosecuted - engaging in activity that intentionally exposes others to the body fluids of an infected person could result in prosecution, including kissing, according to the Independent. Some say that such unintended consequences might encourage Iowa and other states to revisit their transmission laws, the article states (Waddington, Iowa Independent, 6/29).
News of the day
Researchers Develop Key Brake For Immune Cells In Petri Dish -- Hope For Easier Organ Transplantation?
Scientists from the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany and the Medical School Hannover, Germany have succeeded in treating immune cells in a way that enables them to inhibit unwanted immune reactions such as organ rejection. Their results have now been published in the current issue of the scientific journal Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.
Endocrinology

Scientists Locate Disease Switches

New perspectives in the treatment of disease The team, led by Professor Matthias Mann of Novo Nordisk Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Germany, have detected 3,600 acetylation switches in 1,750 different proteins. These switches, which regulate protein functions, may prove to be a crucial factor in human ageing and the onset and treatment of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer"s disease and Parkinson"s disease. The results of the team"s work have been published in the current edition of the journal Science. "This is more than just a technological achievement, it has also expanded the number of known acetylation switches by a factor of six, and it gives us for the first time a comprehensive insight into this type of protein modification," says Professor Mann. A given protein can perform more than one task, and how it behaves is regulated by adding a small molecule that acts as a "switch" which can turn on the different tasks. Acetylation is essential for cells" ability to function normally. Defective protein regulation plays a role in ageing and the development of diseases such as cancer, Parkinson"s and Alzheimer"s. "With the new mapping, we can now begin to study and describe how acetylation switches respond to medications that could repair the defects on them. It can have a major impact on medical care," says Professor Mann, adding that medications to repair the damaged protein regulation are already showing promising in the treatment of cancer. Cooperating proteins The team also discovered that acetylation modification occurs primarily on proteins that work together, and that these switches have much greater consequences for the organism"s function than previously thought. In one example, the function of Cdc28, an important growth protein in yeast, can be disrupted by the addition of an acetylation button, ultimately affecting the organism"s ability to survive. The results of the team"s research were published in the 17 July 2009 edition of Science. University of Copenhagen


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