“The Supreme Court said Monday that state prisoners may not present new evidence in federal court in support of a claim that their post-conviction counsel in state court was ineffective in violation of the Constitution,” CNN reports.
“The ruling is a major defeat for two inmates on death row who said they had compelling claims that their state lawyers failed to pursue.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Americans support limiting the number of years a Supreme Court Justice can serve on the Supreme Court, 69% to 27%.
In addition, a majority of Americans say the Supreme Court is mainly motivated by politics, 63% to 32%.
“The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in a case involving the use of campaign funds to repay personal campaign loans, dealing the latest blow to campaign finance regulations,” CNN reports.
“The court said that a federal cap on candidates using political contributions after the election to recoup personal loans made to their campaign was unconstitutional.”
Join for as low as $6 per month. Learn more.
Already a member? Sign in here.
Washington Post: “One federal appeals court judge in D.C. has hired only male law clerks for the past two decades. Another judge allegedly refused to speak to a staffer for weeks after a child-care emergency caused the assistant to depart work early one day. Others are said to have reduced their employees to tears by yelling or making cruel comments about the quality of their work.”
“These and other complaints appear in a confidential workplace survey conducted for the federal trial and appeals courts in the nation’s capital, an institution regarded as a steppingstone to the Supreme Court. It details instances of gender discrimination, bullying and racial insensitivity, while underscoring the stark power imbalance between judges with life tenure and the assistants who depend on them for career advancement.”
“The leak of a draft opinion has done irreparable damage to the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas said at a conference in Dallas on Friday night, adding that it had destroyed trust among the members of the court,” the New York Times reports.
Said Thomas: “Look where we are, where that trust or that belief is gone forever. And when you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder.”
“The Supreme Court is set to meet behind closed doors on Thursday for the first time since the astonishing leak of a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade,” CNN reports.
Jeffrey Toobin: “As Thomas settles into his fourth decade on the Supreme Court, his influence, even his control, is ascendant. Thomas began his career as a justice as a near outcast – an ideological fringe figure and a scarred veteran of a brutal confirmation fight. Today, he is a revered figure in the conservative movement, and he is watching ideas he championed from the margins turn into the law of the land.”
“The Supreme Court is set to gather Thursday for the first time since the disclosure that it voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and there’s no sign that the court is changing course from issuing that ruling by the end of June,” Politico reports.
“Justice Samuel Alito’s sweeping and blunt draft majority opinion from February overturning Roe remains the court’s only circulated draft in the pending Mississippi abortion case, Politico has learned, and none of the conservative justices who initially sided with Alito have to date switched their votes. No dissenting draft opinions have circulated from any justice, including the three liberals.”
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Americans’ confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court has collapsed over the last 20 months — a period that began with former President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans installing a 6-3 conservative majority ahead of the 2020 election.
“Members of the US Senate are aiming to pass a bipartisan bill that would expand security protection to the family members of justices, following protests at some Supreme Court justices’ homes over the weekend,” CNN reports.
Citing “rumors around D.C.,” Breitbart reports that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his family had to seek shelter at an undisclosed location.
Politico says the report seems to be fueled by comments from conservative lawyer Ilya Shapiro, who said on Fox News that he “heard that Justice Alito has been taken to an undisclosed location with his family.”
Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg told ABC News that a clerk for a conservative justice is the “leading theory” amid intense speculation about who released a draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito showing the court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Said Totenberg: “The only one that makes sense is it came from somebody who was afraid that this majority might not hold.”
Earlier for members: The Supreme Court Leak Was Probably by Conservatives
“When the Supreme Court heard arguments in December over the fate of the constitutional right to abortion, it was already clear that other rights, notably including same-sex marriage, could be at risk if the court overruled Roe v. Wade,” the New York Times reports.
“The logic of that legal earthquake, Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted, would produce a jurisprudential tsunami that could sweep away other precedents, too.”
“The logic of the opinion left plenty of room for debate. It said a right to abortion cannot be found in the Constitution or inferred from its provisions. The same could be said, using the draft opinion’s general reasoning, for contraception, gay intimacy and same-sex marriage, rights established by three Supreme Court decisions that were discussed at some length in the argument in December.”
As of last week, when the draft Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade first leaked, five justices were still on board with the gist of what Justice Samuel Alito had drafted back in February, the Washington Post reports.
Chief Justice John Roberts has backed an incremental approach to banning abortions, but also to keep in place key tenets of Supreme Court precedent on abortion rights.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturns women’s constitutional right to abortion this summer, Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Master (R) thinks judges should also take aim at the right to buy and use contraception, the Arizona Mirror reports.
Justice Clarence Thomas told a group of judges and lawyers at the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference in Atlanta that “the events of earlier this week” show that if people cannot “live with outcomes we don’t agree with,” then the integrity of the judicial branch of government is undermined, CNN reports.
Chief Justice John Roberts said that the leak of a draft opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade is “absolutely appalling” and stressed that he hopes “one bad apple” would not change “people’s perception” of the nation’s highest court and workforce, CNN reports.
Roberts also said that if “the person” or “people” behind the leak think it will affect the work of the Supreme Court, they are “foolish.”
Tom Goldstein makes a good case that were actually (at least) two leakers and three leaks from the Supreme Court over the last week.
The bombshell leak this week — of Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade — was probably a response to one of the previous leaks.
☑️ Have you have ever wondered if or how the United States might break up? Now available as an audio book: A More Perfect Union: Reimagining The United States as a European Union-style Federation.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.