SSM Update: Connecticut Chief Justice Recuses Herself
The Connecticut supreme court will hear oral arguments soon. The new chief justice Chase Rogers,
has recused herself because her husband's firm filed an amicus brief:
". . .The state Supreme Court's new chief justice, Chase T. Rogers, will not preside over the most significant case to be heard by the court this year, in which eight couples are challenging the ban on same-sex marriage.
The landmark constitutional case, Kerrigan et al v. the state Department of Public Health, will be argued before a full panel of the court May 14.
Rogers confirmed through a spokesperson Tuesday that she is not hearing the case because members of her husband's law firm, Robinson & Cole, authored a friend-of-the-court brief for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Lambda is a national organization that supports gay marriage and has been involved in lawsuits in six states where same-sex couples sought the right to marry.
Robinson & Cole attorneys Linda Morkan and Kori Termine wrote the 10-page brief submitted by Lambda. Rogers' husband, Edward O'Hanlan, is a partner in the firm who specializes in land use, zoning and complex property litigation.
Rogers stated during her confirmation hearing before the legislature's judiciary committee last month that she would continue to disqualify herself from cases in which the law firm is involved, but would reconsider her stance on cases involving her former law firm of Cummings & Lockwood.
Robinson & Cole has 225 lawyers and offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York.
Senior Justice William J. Sullivan will sit in Rogers' place on the full panel of seven justices. Each side has been allotted 90 minutes to argue the case - three times the normal time limit. Arguments are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.
It remains to be seen whether Sullivan's is a swing vote on the seven-member panel. He is a devout Catholic who wrote a separate concurrence in a 2003 fetal assault case to emphasize that a fetus may be more than a "member" of a woman's body, in the language of the assault statute.
"I write separately only to emphasize that the mere fact that we have determined that a fetus, under the circumstances of this case, is a `member' of a woman's body...does not suggest that either the majority or I have concluded that a fetus may not have its own independent existence," Sullivan wrote. "In other words, the fetus may both be part of its mother as well as its own individual being." . . ."
posted by maggie at
8:58 AM | link
Maggie,
Do you think she would have recused herself if her husband had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the ADF?
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