2nd Circuit appeals court judges try to silence the stop-and-frisk judge. - Emily Bazelon// Slate

One of the pluses of being a Federal Judge is lifetime tenure.  But if your lips get a bit loose and there is an ideologically hostile appeals court you can find your history-making case yanked and your name besmirched. - GWC
NYPD and Judge Shira Scheindlin: 2nd Circuit appeals court judges try to silence the stop-and-frisk judge.:
by Emily Bazelon // Slate

There’s no question that Bloomberg and the NYPD hated having her preside over the stop-and-frisk suits. But that doesn’t mean she was biased. It means that she was giving them a hard time, for reasons that the appeals court may yet find were entirely justified. And tellingly, the city’s lawyers didn’t ask the 2nd Circuit to disqualify her. That means no one briefed or argued this question, and Scheindlin had no chance to defend or explain herself before the decision was made. The 2nd Circuit’s move to remove her was itself an overreach. “There is absolutely nothing in the record before the 2nd Circuit addressing these issues,” says Nancy Gertner, a former (bold) federal judge in Boston who now teaches at Harvard Law School. “If there is bias here, it is that of the 2nd Circuit that went out of its way to disqualify a judge—outside of the normal processes, looking beyond the record, and without giving her a chance to respond.”

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