SOTOMAYOR THE LONELY LIBERAL VOICE | Big Law Snubs Trump On Travel Ban Case | 17 States Sue Federal Government Over Census
April 3, 2018
SCOTUS SAFETY NET
|ICYMI, the Supreme Court yesterday sided with police in a case centered around an Arizona police officer shooting a knife-carrying woman four times in her own front yard. Justices shielded the police officer from being sued on claims that he used excessive force, marking yet another decision from the court shielding police from such lawsuits.
SHOUTS FOR SONIA
|Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern remarks that JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR has “become a lonely voice fighting against the Supreme Court’s rightward turn.” He reviews a pair of opinions from the court, each getting a dissent from Sotomayor “with indignation at her colleagues’ solicitude for violent cops and indifference toward death row inmates.” Stern sees these dissents as an indication of the growing asymmetry in the court’s jurisprudence. “Powerful defendants get a quick helping hand. Powerless ones get screwed.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|“What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Get About Racism” comes as the clear title in the latest piece of a series on voting in America from The New York Times Ed Board. NYT argues that the right to vote needs “frequent care and tending by the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court.” Unfortunately, it seems SCOTUS has been dropping the ball as of late in its duty to defend one of our democracy’s foundational rights.
SUPREME SNUB
|“More than two dozen elite private law firms filed amicus briefs Friday backing Hawaii in its U.S. Supreme Court challenge to PRESIDENT TRUMP’S executive order barring people from several Muslim majority countries from entering the United States. Among the Big Law firms representing Hawaii’s amici are Jones Day, the former home of Trump’s solicitor general, NOEL FRANCISCO, and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, whose star litigator, THEODORE OLSON, declined an invitation last month to join the president’s defense team in Special Counsel ROBERT MUELLER’S investigation.” That’s Alison Frankel with Reuters reporting on the big Big Law snub of Trump’s policy.
PODCAST DU JOUR
|Supreme Court podcast, First Mondays, reviews the Supreme Court’s March sitting and goes “in like a lion” naming names in the War on Arbitration where Big Law firms require summer associates to sign arbitration agreements.
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME
|Seventeen states, the District of Columbia and six cities sued the U.S. government today, saying a plan to add a citizenship demand to the census questionnaire is unconstitutional and would “fatally undermine the accuracy of the population count.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
The Supreme Court May Hand An Enduring Advantage To The Republican Party This Term
Los Angeles Times“The court’s GOP contingents may not amount to much as defenders of democracy and majority rule, but they’ve been powerful champions of Republican rule — a status that this year’s rulings may well, and disastrously, confirm.”
The Supreme Court Could Take A Lesson From The Emoluments Judge
Slate“One of the principle reasons partisan gerrymandering has not only survived but thrived in recent years is because judges have run away from any possible solutions by claiming it wasn’t their problem. This doctrine of avoiding the ‘political thicket’ seemed, frustratingly, to re-enter the fray during Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral arguments on a Maryland gerrymandering case. But also on Wednesday, we may have actually taken a major leap forward on the ‘political-question doctrine’ in another area where courts have been similarly reluctant to step in: emoluments.”
OTHER NEWS
Supreme Court Turns Away Suit By Terrorism Victims
The Wall Street Journal“The Supreme Court on Monday turned away American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel seeking to sue the Palestine Liberation Organization, its unsigned order the latest legal setback for private efforts to hold sponsors and financiers of international terrorism legally accountable.”
The Supreme Court Won't Hear An Anti-Abortion Activist's Case Over The Release Of Secretly Recorded Videos
Buzzfeed“David Daleiden — the man responsible for the 2015 videos accusing Planned Parenthood of profiting off of the sale of fetal tissue procured during abortions — appealed a lower court’s decision to block the release of additional footage after a judge determined there was no evidence of wrongdoing that justified the videos’ release. With the Supreme Court declining to hear Daleiden’s case, the lower court’s ruling stands. While the outcome was not unexpected, Daleiden says he and his organization will keep trying to release the videos.”
Why The Supreme Court Reviews So Many Qualified Immunity Cases
Reason“But because the standard is quite deferential under the Supreme Court’s approach, remedies are imposed ex post only in pretty rare and extreme cases. If the system works as the Justices imagine – a huge ‘if,’ obviously, but run with it for now – you may end up with the needed deterrence (from the conduct rule announced ex ante) with less of other harms imposed (from the decision rule applied ex post).”