Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

Abortion is almost as old as childbirth. There has always been a need for some women to end their pregnancies. In modern times, the law’s attitude toward that need has varied. In the United States, at the time the Constitution was adopted, abortions before “quickening” were both legal and commonplace, often performed by midwives. In the nineteenth century, under the influence of the ascendant medical profession, which opposed abortion (and wanted to control health care), states began to outlaw the procedure, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was all but uniformly illegal. The rise of the feminist movement led to widespread efforts to decriminalize abortion, and in 1973 the Supreme Court found, in Roe v. Wade, that the Constitution prohibited the states from outlawing it.

Throughout this long legal history, the one constant has been that women have continued to have abortions. The rate has declined slightly in recent years, but, according to the Guttmacher Institute, thirty-five per cent of all women of reproductive age in America today will have had an abortion by the time they are forty-five. It might be assumed that such a common procedure would be included in a nation’s plan to protect the health of its citizens. In fact, the story of abortion during the past decade has been its separation from other medical services available to women. Abortion, as the academics like to say, is being marginalized.

The latest evidence comes from the House of Representatives, which two weekends ago narrowly passed its health-care bill, by a vote of 220 to 215. One reason that the Democrats won back control of Congress is that the Party adopted a “big tent” philosophy on abortion. The implications of that approach became clear when, during the health-care vote, the House considered a last-minute amendment by Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, which proposed scrubbing the bill of government subsidies for abortion procedures. It passed 240 to 194, with sixty-four Democrats voting in favor.

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The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is 'perhaps the biggest challenge in the history of federal law enforcement'

Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

The federal courts face an unprecedented challenge in trying accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo detainees for the terrorist attacks that took 3,000 lives, says CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and four other Guantanamo detainees are being transferred to New York to face trial in a civilian court for the September 11 attacks, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday.

They will face trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York - a short distance from the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Holder said he expects the government to seek the death penalty in the cases.

Mohammed is the confessed organizer of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. But his confession could be called into question during trial. A 2005 Justice Department memo - released by the Obama administration - revealed he had been waterboarded 183 times in March 2003, a technique that President Obama has called torture.

CNN spoke with Toobin on Friday morning. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Toobin is a senior analyst for CNN and author of "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court."

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Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan

Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

Cabinet members may end up negotiating which legal system will try Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in last week's mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Tuesday.

Thirteen people - 12 of them soldiers - were killed and 42 wounded Thursday when a gunman opened fire at the post's Soldier Readiness Center. A police officer shot Hasan, the only suspect, ending the carnage.

Hasan remains in intensive care at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, but is breathing on his own and talking, hospital spokesman Dewey Mitchell said.

Toobin addressed questions about the case Tuesday morning.

CNN: In which legal system will Hasan be tried?

Jeffrey Toobin: We know for certain it will not be in state court. There's exclusive federal jurisdiction on an Army base. They will have to decide whether they want to do it as a court-martial or as a federal prosecution in United States District Court.

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Program Note: Tune in tonight for more from Jeffrey Toobin on Sen. Kennedy's influence on the Supreme Court. AC360° 10 p.m. ET.

Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

The vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor last month was sixty-eight to thirty-one—but the one senator who was missing may have had more influence over the Supreme Court than any in history. Edward M. Kennedy won election in 1962, voted on every nominee from Abe Fortas in 1965 to Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2005, and to an unprecedented extent shaped the composition of the Court itself.

Early in his tenure, in 1969 and 1970, Kennedy helped lead the fight to defeat two of President Nixon’s nominees, Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell, both of whom lost by narrow margins. In 1971, Kennedy was one of only twenty-six senators to oppose the nomination of William H. Rehnquist as an associate justice. (Kennedy voted against Rehnquist for Chief Justice, too, in 1986).

Still, the summit of Kennedy’s influence on the Court—and perhaps his career as a senator—was his role in the fight over Robert H. Bork’s nomination in 1987. Kennedy was fifty-five at the time, his dreams of the Presidency having been put away for good nearly a decade earlier. At the time, Kennedy had little to gain politically by leading the opposition to Bork, but he did it nonetheless, and he did it with a passion that has defined Supreme Court fights ever since.

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Sonia Sotomayor appears to view the Constitution much like retired Justice David Souter did.

Jeffrey Toobin
CNN Senior Analyst

One of the enduring myths about Supreme Court justices is that they often turn out to "surprise" the presidents who appoint them. Sure-thing conservatives, it is said, turn out to be liberals, ­and vice versa. In fact, the evidence is almost entirely the opposite: that with justices, as in life, what you see is what you get.

The question, then, is this: What do you see when you look at Sonia Sotomayor, who begins her confirmation hearings as a strong favorite for confirmation?

She is, above all, a veteran judge ­who has 18 years on the federal bench: six as a trial judge (appointed by President George H.W. Bush) and the rest on the court of appeals (appointed by President Clinton). The question of competence is closed. Sotomayor can do the job. It's no surprise that she received a unanimous rating of well-qualified from the American Bar Association screening committee.

But what would she stand for as a Supreme Court justice? She is, it seems, a liberal,­ but a liberal in the cautious and careful mode of her likely future colleagues Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

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AC360°

Erica and Anderson have been reminiscing about their first concerts. Anderson couldn’t remember if his was Grandmaster Flash, the Furious Five or Elvis Costello. Erica admitted she saw Peter, Paul, and Mary with her dad.

That got all of us thinking about our own first concerts. What was yours?

We asked you to guess the first concerts of AC360° Contributors.

Here are some answers.

David Gergen: "That was a long time ago - maybe the late 50s - and I can't remember whether it was Perry Como or Bo Diddley - or whether I was wearing white shoes or a bomber jacket."

Tom Foreman: "My first real concert was a whopper: Elvis Presley when I was 16 years old." Read Tom Foreman's post on his experience here.

Jeffrey Toobin: "I went to a Chicago concert at Madison Square Garden. At the end of the concert, everyone lit matches and held them in the air. I thought this was evidence that this was the greatest concert ever. (I didn't realize this was done at every concert, all the time.)"

Gloria Borger: "I remember my fist concert. It was Livingston Taylor, and I went with my (now) husband while we were in college. Too bad I was really disappointed because I thought he was taking me to see James Taylor, his brother. It turned out to be fine, although the only song I can remember now is "Carolina Day," which I would swear is a James Taylor song. But it's not; I looked it up. The next concert event was much better: The Chambers Brothers. I recall the only song they played was "Time Has Come Today." In fact, I think the set isn't over yet!"

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Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

Sixth Catholic. Second woman. Third New Yorker. (First from the Bronx. Ruth Bader Ginsburg hails from Brooklyn, Antonin Scalia from Queens.) First Hispanic. It’s understandable and appropriate to examine Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court according to the customary demographic designations. And it’s interesting, too, to learn (as we will at great length) about her remarkable personal story. (Raised in a single-parent home, in a housing project; summa cum laude at Princeton; Yale Law School; prosecutor under Robert Morgenthau.)

But it’s worth noting that the things we talk about now, during the confirmation process, tend to mean little down the road, when it really counts. John Paul Stevens had the opposite of a hard-luck story. (Raised in a luxury hotel in Chicago—the Stevens Hotel.) The question about Anthony Kennedy was whether he had resigned at the appropriate time from a restricted club. The National Organization for Women put out a leaflet that said, “Stop Souter—Or Women Will Die.” All of this was either irrelevant or (as with Souter) simply wrong. Only on rare occasions do we learn things of real importance—as we did, in 1991, about Clarence Thomas.

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Anderson Cooper talks with his panel about a Gitmo detainee coming to the United States for trial.