1995—In A Woman’s Choice v. Newman, federal district judge David F. Hamilton issues a preliminary injunction preventing Indiana from implementing its recently enacted statute governing informed consent for abortion. Hamilton’s extraordinary obstruction of that statute—which was materially identical to the provisions held to be constitutionally permissible in the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey—continues for seven years, until the Seventh Circuit reverses his rulings.
In March 2009, President Obama makes the former ACLU activist his first nominee to a federal appellate seat. In its headline on the nomination news, the New York Times touts Hamilton as a “moderate.”
2015—Longtime Wisconsin supreme court justice Shirley Abrahamson drops her appeal of a district-court ruling (by an Obama appointee, no less) that rejected her patently frivolous (and evidently perjured) lawsuit against the operation of a voter-adopted referendum that effectively displaced her as chief justice. So now everyone can agree that Abrahamson is not appealing.