RBG REACHES A MILESTONE | Chief Justice Maybe Makes A Little History | What To Do When Congress Won’t Act
April 19, 2018
DOWN TO THE NUMBERS
|For SCOTUSblog, Adam Feldman writes on the Chambers & Partners annual list of top appellate lawyers and firms. He notes, “Many of the 66 attorneys in Chambers’ list of top appellate lawyers were involved in multiple cases across the 2016 and 2017 Supreme Court terms. In fact, when we look at their total participation in terms of merits and amicus briefs that name them as counsel, we have 282 briefs, or an average of 4.27 briefs per attorney. This measure is quite skewed, because the top participating attorneys were involved in well over five cases during this period and the least involved attorneys were involved in few to no cases in the Supreme Court. Just comparing the 2016 and 2017 terms, these attorneys are slightly more involved in cases this term than last.”
A NOTORIOUS MILESTONE
|On Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s eldest justice reached a milestone after nearly 25 years on the high court. JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG was able to assign the majority opinion in a case for the very first time. Part of the reason she was able to do so is because the freshman justice joined the liberal majority. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reports on the little bit of history-making and notes, “No one expects Gorsuch to join the liberals regularly in contested cases. And it’s worth noting that if Merrick Garland sat in the seat Gorsuch now occupies, Ginsburg would’ve routinely had the authority to perform this role, a privilege of which she was unjustly robbed. But Gorsuch has already demonstrated more ideological independence than Alito, and he seems poised to swing left at least once more this term. That means Ginsburg should have more opportunities to assign opinions—and further guide the direction of the law—in the twilight of her tenure.”
SPEAKING OF MILESTONES
|Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle with The National Law Journal report that during Tuesday’s arguments, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS granted a motion from Assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, Jeffrey Sandberg, to have his husband be admitted to the Supreme Court bar. “It all happened quickly and without fanfare, but it may be the first time—or one of the first—that a lawyer has moved the admission of his or her same-sex spouse to the Supreme Court bar in the court chamber.”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
|Maria Sacchetti writes in The Washington Post that the SCOTUS ruling on immigration this week could benefit thousands of immigrants, but it has also ignited a new battle over the power to deport. Green-card holders are most likely to benefit from the ruling, but so too are undocumented immigrants who may now be able to plead their case if accused of a crime.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
|The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down an immigration law for being too vague to be constitutional reveals how a vagueness in law can lead to arbitrary decisions. So says Matt O’Brien in The Hill where he argues the decision “represents the creeping erosion of the distinction between civil and criminal proceedings.” He writes, “The notion that removing foreign trespassers, and ungrateful guests, from the United States is somehow punitive is absurd on its face. Such claims flip the script, implying that the U.S. government’s primary responsibility in the immigration arena is protecting foreigners’ dubious claims to rights that they do not, in fact, possess, rather than fulfilling its first duty, which is protecting American citizens.”
WHAT TO DO WHEN CONGRESS WON'T
|Daniel Hemel opines in The Washington Post that the Supreme Court is going to have to act on the issue of internet sales because Congress just won’t. He hopes that by the end of Tuesday’s argument over whether internet retailers should have to put a tax on their sales, the justices understood that they can’t rely on Congress to answer that question for them. “Passing the buck here will cause states and localities to lose billions of dollars more in sales tax revenue. And the justices have no one to pass the buck to but themselves.”