My Part 1 post on Supreme Court candidate Diane Wood exposed her shenanigans in NOW v. Scheidler. Slate’s Emily Bazelon says that “if you drill down through the layers of litigation, Scheidler doesn’t make for much of a Republican sound bite.” But Bazelon hilariously misunderstands the layers of litigation that she purports to explain.

Bazelon falsely asserts:

In her first crack at the case, in 1992, Wood threw it out. As part of a three-judge panel, she ruled that RICO didn’t apply because NOW and the other plaintiffs hadn’t shown that the alleged acts of racketeering were “economically motivated,” as she thought the statute required.

But Wood wasn’t part of that panel. She wasn’t even a judge then. She was appointed to the Seventh Circuit by President Clinton in 1995. Before then, she was an academic. So Bazelon is defending Wood by attributing to her an opinion that she had no part in.

Bazelon also entirely ignores Wood’s shenanigans in defying the Supreme Court’s mandate after the Court, in 2003, reversed her 2001 ruling by an 8-1 vote. That’s the primary focus of my criticism of Wood’s performance in Scheidler. The Supreme Court proceeded to reverse her again, this time 8-0.

Update: Without acknowledging her error, Bazelon has now tweaked her language so that it merely leaves the false impression that Wood was involved in the 1992 ruling. Further update: Bazelon now acknowledges her error about the 1992 ruling.