“There is going to be a lot of disappointment in the law, a huge amount. Look at me, look at my dissents.”
— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, quoted by CNN, previewing the upcoming Supreme Court term.
“There is going to be a lot of disappointment in the law, a huge amount. Look at me, look at my dissents.”
— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, quoted by CNN, previewing the upcoming Supreme Court term.
“President Biden on Thursday announced plans to nominate 10 people to the federal bench and four to serve on local Washington, D.C., courts,” The Hill reports.
“It’s the eighth round of nominees announced by Biden, who has now named 53 federal judicial nominees.”
“More than 130 federal judges have violated U.S. law and judicial ethics by overseeing court cases involving companies in which they or their family owned stock,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
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“The Supreme Court’s approval rating is plummeting, its critics are more caustic and justices are feeling compelled to plead the case to the public that they are judicial philosophers, not politicians in robes,” the Washington Post reports.
“All of this as the court embarks Oct. 4 on one of the most potentially divisive terms in years. Cases already docketed concern gun control, the separation of church and state, and the biggest showdown in decades on the future of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.”
Robert Reich: “In those classroom discussions almost fifty years ago, Hillary’s hand was always first in the air. When she was called upon, she gave perfect answers – whole paragraphs, precisely phrased. She distinguished one case from another, using precedents and stare decisis to guide her thinking. I was awed.”
“My hand was in the air about half the time, and when called on, my answers were meh.”
“Clarence’s hand was never in the air. I don’t recall him saying anything, ever.”
“Bill was never in class.”
“Only one of us now sits on the Supreme Court. By all accounts, he and four of his colleagues — all appointed by Republican presidents, three by a president who instigated a coup against the United States — are getting ready to violate stare decisis, judicial precedent. I don’t expect them to give a clear and convincing argument for why. Do you?”
A new Marquette University Law School poll found nationwide approval of the Supreme Court falling to 49%, down from 60% in July and from 66% a year ago.
“The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear arguments Dec. 1 on a Mississippi abortion restriction that poses a direct challenge to the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade,” The Hill reports.
Politico: “In taking the case, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority signaled its openness to revisiting and potentially overturning the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, with a ruling expected next year.”
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Thursday criticized some in the judiciary for veering into the role of legislators and politicians, saying it’s not for judges to make policy or to base decisions on their personal feelings or religious beliefs,” CBS News reports.
Said Thomas: “The court was thought to be the least dangerous branch, and we may have become the most dangerous. And I think that’s problematic.”
“I don’t want to die there on the court, so I probably will retire at some point. There are a lot of different considerations, including health and also including the institutional role of the court and so forth. I’ll take those and other things into account.”
— Justice Stephen Breyer, in a Wall Street Journal interview.
“In the wake of a controversial decision on abortion rights, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told a crowd of more than 100 here that she doesn’t believe the highest court in the land is politically driven,” USA Today reports.
Said Barrett: “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told NPR that he will retire on his own terms.
Said Breyer: “When exactly I should retire, or will retire, has many complex parts to it. I think I’m aware of most of them, and I am, and will consider them.”
“The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the execution of a Texas inmate whose request that his pastor be able to touch and pray aloud with him in the death chamber had been rejected by prison authorities,” the New York Times reports.
“The court also agreed to review the case on its merits, without noted dissents. The court’s brief order said the case would be argued in October or November.”
Associated Press: “The high court announced Wednesday that the justices plan to return to their majestic, marble courtroom for arguments beginning in October, more than a year and a half after the in-person sessions were halted because of the coronavirus pandemic.”
“I think the Supreme Court will swat it away once it comes to them in an appropriate manner. If it’s as terrible as people say it is, it‘ll be destroyed by the Supreme Court.”
— Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), quoted by Politico, on the new Texas abortion ban.
Now that Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted to virtually end Roe v. Wade in Texas, here’s a video compilation of all the times that Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said Kavanaugh won’t overturn Roe v. Wade.
Adam Serwer: “The conservative majority on the Supreme Court was so eager to nullify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent securing the right to abortion, that it didn’t even wait for oral arguments…”
“Also remarkable was that the Supreme Court acted through its ‘shadow docket,’ the decisions the justices make regarding emergency appeals such as death-penalty cases. Under normal procedure, cases take time to work their way through the lower courts, and are received at the Supreme Court with extensive records, briefs, and oral arguments. Ideally, this allows the justices to ensure that their hugely consequential decisions are properly informed and made as carefully as possible, weighing all the relevant legal and constitutional issues.”
“But there are some circumstances in which the Court needs to act quickly to prevent some imminent or irreversible harm. There’s nothing inherently sinister about that. The shadow docket, though, now resembles a venue where the conservative legal movement can get speedy service from its friends on the Court.”
New York Times: “A process intended to help the court deal with emergency petitions and routine matters has grown into a backdoor way of making major policy decisions.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “Those of us who believe that Roe v. Wade was correct when it gave women a constitutional right to abortion in 1973 are obviously unhappy with the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’ decision to de facto overturn it — or, as Dahlia Lithwick put it in Slate Wednesday evening, Roe was ‘overruled this week, or nullified, or merely paused for a few million people.'”
“But well beyond that: Procedure matters, and the ad hoc, unjustified procedure in this case — procedure that produced a sharp and compelling dissent from Chief Justice John Roberts, who may eventually join a majority to destroy or overturn Roe — may have done as much to undermine the rule of law as anything we’ve seen in these last years of threats to constitutional government.”
“It simply can’t be the case that state governments can eliminate established constitutional rights by structuring laws so that they must go into effect, thus robbing people of those rights, without the courts having any option of stopping them. That’s what Texas and a handful of judges have done in this case, and it’s wrong and it’s lawless even if Roe was incorrectly decided.”
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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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