JUDGE BECOMES JUSTICE | THE HOT BENCH WITH RICHARD WOLF | Junior Justice Gorsuch To Have Immediate Impact
April 10, 2017
THE HOT BENCH
|For the latest Hot Bench interview, SCOTUSDaily had the great fortune of speaking with RICHARD WOLF of USA Today just hours after Senate Republicans invoked the nuclear option and changed the Senate rules in order to confirm JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH to the Supreme Court. Wolf gave us the play-by-play of what went down in the Senate and what he can expect as now-Justice Gorsuch gets to work. Wolf also explained why he sees cameras in the courtroom as “the ultimate” way of achieving more transparency around the Supreme Court and increasing the public’s understanding of the third branch. “In all regards it would help reporters and the general public to be able to see the court more freely. I just think it’s the right thing to do.” Read our full interview.
IT'S OFFISH
|This morning, NEIL M. GORSUCH was sworn in behind closed doors at the Supreme Court, becoming the 113th person to serve on the nation’s highest court. JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY then administered the second oath of office in a public ceremony at the White House. PRESIDENT TRUMP spoke before the second oath was administered and he made a point of thanking Senate Majority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL for his role in winning the confirmation some 14 months after JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA passed and left a vacancy at the court. And with that, we now have nine justices on the bench, the conservative tilt has been restored, and it’s finally time to get back to business.
CH-CH-CHANGES
|It isn’t going to take long for JUSTICE GORSUCH to make his mark on the Supreme Court. He joins SCOTUS towards the end of OT16, and because we know the justices like to save the best for last, Gorsuch will get to weigh in on some pretty significant cases right out the gate. Gorsuch would cast potentially significant votes in cases that pit religious liberty against gay rights, test limits on funding for church schools and challenge California’s restrictions on carrying a concealed gun in public. Good thing you’re an avid reader of SCOTUSDaily — you won’t miss a thing as the rest of the term unfolds.
JUNIOR JUSTICE
|“No one could have known it at the time, but at the end of last summer, JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN gave NEIL M. GORSUCH a face-to-face tutorial on what it means to be the Supreme Court’s newest justice.” Robert Barnes with The Washington Post writes, “It starts in the kitchen.”
THE ROOKIE
|“Now, after a lifetime of preparation and serving grueling weeks as a nominee, he starts his tenure as the junior-most justice. The new guy. The rookie. Sure, his vote on a dream docket of constitutional and statutory cases will be equal to any other justice. They all wear the same black robes, after all. But someone has to open the doors and lead the cafeteria committee.” CNN’s Ariane de Vogue reports on JUSTICE GORSUCH’S newbie status.
GET USED TO IT
|Ed Kilgore with New York Magazine says we should get used to hearing “JUSTICE GORSUCH” since the 49-year-old will likely be on the court for a good, long while. Kilgore also notes, “You never know what will happen in this mortal coil, but when the current batch of oldsters on the Court (84-year-old GINSBURG, 80-year-old ANTHONY KENNEDY, and 78-year-old STEPHEN BREYER) move on, we could see a very stable SCOTUS for a good while. That is one of many reasons that the presidential election of 2020 could be an even bigger deal than that of 2016. The odds are pretty good that whoever wins four years after that — meaning, in the election of 2024 — could become the first president since JIMMY CARTER to come and go without a single Supreme Court nomination.”
THE CONSERVATIVE PIPELINE TO SCOTUS
|“Leo, in other words, knew how to play the game—how to find a nominee who met Trump’s ideological requirements as well as his own, while observing the proprieties expected for judicial nominees. And finding potential candidates, Leo told me, ‘is easy, in the sense that when you’ve been working in this vineyard for twenty-five years you know everybody.’” Jeffrey Toobin with The New Yorker introduces us to LEONARD LEO, the man responsible for selecting NEIL M. GORSUCH and every other person on the president’s short list of Supreme Court nominees.
THINKIN' BOUT YOU
|Hey Judge Garland, we haven’t forgotten you and neither has Adam Liptak with The New York Times who writes to remind us how the Supreme Court might have been reshaped had JUDGE MERRICK GARLAND filled the seat Judge Gorsuch was confirmed to today. Liptak: “The answer shows just how polarized the Supreme Court has become. The titanic struggle over who would replace Justice Antonin Scalia was nothing if not partisan, and for good reason — the Supreme Court is just as divided as the rest of the nation.”
NO REGRETS
|POLITICO’S Elana Schor explains why Democrats have no regrets about their role in the deployment of the nuclear option last week. She writes, “If Democrats were going to lose the filibuster regardless, best to go down swinging now on a nominee many found far too conservative — a move that would also please a liberal base still spoiling for a fight against Trump.”
TOP-ED
|In the Los Angeles Times, Richard Hasen opines that CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS could be the swing vote on SCOTUS in the future. “If KENNEDY goes, or if a liberal justice gets sick or dies, Democrats have few levers to stop Republicans from confirming a nominee even more conservative than Gorsuch. The future, then, holds a Supreme Court where Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is the swing vote — a scary eventuality for progressives.”
TOP-ED 2.0
|The very famous best-selling author, JOHN GRISHAM, flexes his editorial skills for a piece in USA Today in which he pleads for an end to “the execution madness in Arkansas.” Grisham: “In my home state of Arkansas, plans are underway for a spectacular legal train wreck starting next week. Gov. Asa Hutchinson has signed death warrants to execute eight men in 10 days, something not even Texas, with its vaunted assembly line, has ever attempted. Indeed, no death-happy state has ever dreamed of eight kills in such a short time…An execution is the most serious act a government can undertake. Why assume so many risks in the name of expediency? Even if Arkansas pulls it off, justice will lose.”
THE GLORIOUSLY PREDICTABLE BEAT OF SCOTUS
|Adam Liptak of The New York Times takes a page out of SCOTUSDaily’s Hot Bench book to talk about what the last year or so of covering the Supreme Court has been like. He says for the most part, it’s a pretty civilized beat. That is, until February 13, 2016 when JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA died and all hell broke loose.