A Place on the Bench

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the place on the Bench for women:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?_r=1

Here is a website to follow for Sotomayer's confirmation hearings: The Thinking Women's Guide to the Supreme Court Hearings, published by the National Women's Law Center
http://www.nwlc.org/details.cfm?id=3624&section=JCWR

Sixth Amendment Rights Trump Domestic Violence

Seems that if your accuser can not stand in front of you and accuse you of domestic violence, because perhaps she is dead at your hand, well, than you can not cross examine her, and thus, that evidence is not admissible.
The California courts had allowed the murder victim's statements made to the police , that the man accused of murdering her, had threatened to kill her (can we say: domestic violence?). The Supreme Court found that these statements allowed into evidence violated the constitutional rights of the accused murderer. Justice Scalia in the majority opinion (6-3) wrote that use of the statement made to the police violated Mr. Giles’s Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine the witnesses against him, unless the prosecution could first prove that he deliberately killed her to make her unavailable to testify. Mr. Giles claimed he killed her in self-defense.

Giles V California
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-6053.pdf