Category: News

Lawyers for former Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, the State Department, and a conservative group tangled repeatedly on Friday as Mills testified at a contentious deposition in a lawsuit relating to Clinton’s use of a private email account and server during her tenure as secretary of state, a transcript of the session shows.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Friday an interest rate hike is “probably” appropriate in the coming months if economic data improve.

“It’s appropriate, and I’ve said this in the past, I think for the Fed to gradually and cautiously increase our overnight interest rate over time and probably in the coming months, such a move would be appropriate,” she said in response to a question at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Her remarks comes as colleagues on the Fed’s policymaking committee have pointed to an increase in the federal funds rate target sooner rather than later. Yellen has expressed caution this year on rates, as inflation lags below the Fed’s 2 percent target and global risks persist.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen speaks at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. May 27, 2016.
“The economy is continuing to improve,” Yellen said, adding that she sees growth picking up after a sluggish first quarter. Yellen added that oil prices and the dollar are “roughly stabilizing,” which would help to push inflation toward the Fed’s goal.

The Fed’s policymaking committee meets on June 14 and 15. Markets priced in a roughly 28 percent chance of a hike in June and 57 percent in July before Yellen spoke, according to the CME Group. Those chances rose to 34 and 62 percent for June and July, respectively, after her comments.
The Federal Open Market Committee’s April meeting minutes released this month showed most policymakers would support a hike in June if economic data improved as expected.

The biggest impact any president can have on the nation is the ability to shape the Supreme Court. Conservative voters are especially concerned about this because they believe the Court has become too liberal in recent years. With the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, conservative concerns about the Court have reached panic levels. Given the age of current Justices, the next president could shape the Court for a generation.

The importance of this issue was highlighted by Donald Trump releasing names of his potential nominees. It was a good strategic move giving conservatives a reason to unify behind his campaign. For most potential Republican voters, Trump’s choices were far preferable to those Hillary Clinton would nominate.

But, the issue of Supreme Court nominations is just the tip of the iceberg. When you look beneath the surface, conservatives face a far greater challenge with courts and the legal system.

Research by Northwestern University Law Professor James Lindgren shows that the legal system feeding cases to the Supreme Court over-represents Democrats and under-represents Christians. While 41% of the working population are Democrats, 61% of lawyers claim that affiliation. At the same time, 68% of lawyers are Christians compared to 78% of working Americans. That’s a bit problematic, but not overwhelming.

When you go a little deeper and look at who’s teaching the next generation of lawyers, the differences become truly astounding. Nationally, there are a few more Democratic voters than Republicans and Independents, but the overall numbers are fairly even. However, among law school faculty, 82% are Democrats, 11% Republican, and 6% Independent. Fewer than half are Christian.

If we want our legal system to look like America, the nation’s law schools are not even close.

This matters tremendously because we are in the midst of a great national and cultural debate about the proper relationship between a free people and their government.

On the one side are the founding ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence—the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a belief in freedom and self-governance. It’s the idea that we can do whatever we want with our lives so long as we don’t interfere with the right of others to do the same.

The other side is a progressive tradition that has been on a collision course with America’s founding ideals for more than a century. Theodore Roosevelt, the first progressive president, complained that we needed to stop talking about the rights of the people and start talking about their duty to government. Though Roosevelt was a Republican, his views are now more welcome among Democratic party leaders.

Lindgren’s research suggests that the rising generation of lawyers is unlikely to receive a balanced perspective on this clash. That could push our system of laws and governance even further out of touch with the nation it is supposed to serve.

There are no easy answers to this dilemma, but it is important to recognize that the problems with our judicial system run much deeper than the Supreme Court.