NO MORE MOORE | Arguments For Phillips Fall Flat In Cake Case | SCOTUS Clerks Cut From The Same Cloth
December 13, 2017
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 2000, AL GORE conceded the presidency to his Republican rival, GOVERNOR GEORGE W. BUSH. This came the day after the Supreme Court decided 7 to 2 that the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling requiring a statewide recount of ballots was unconstitutional. Andrew Glass with POLITICO remembers that moment in history for us and recalls JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR suggesting SCOTUS should have probably declined to hear the case because the court’s involvement “gave the court a less- than-perfect reputation.”
BAD BOY ROY GOES DOWN
|Last night, a Democrat won a U.S. Senate seat for the state of Alabama — news we haven’t heard in 25 years. DOUG JONES defeated ROY MOORE after a brutal campaign marked by national attention over accusations of sexual abuse and child molestation against Moore. Prior to the race, Moore made headlines in his career for being twice removed from Alabama’s state supreme court. In 2015, he was suspended from his position as the chief justice for ordering state judges to defy the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board over at The Washington Post thinks the arguments in favor of JACK PHILLIPS—the baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding—fall flat. WaPo: “To be sure, many well-meaning people may have found the cultural shift toward full acceptance of same-sex marriage to be uncomfortably rapid. But politeness and tolerance are social values, not legal principles. They are not reasons to overturn anti-discrimination law. When a ‘cake artist’ opens the doors of his bakery, he commits to serving all customers equally.”
CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH
|A series of articles from The National Law Journal this week document the incredible lack of diversity among Supreme Court clerks who are mostly white men coming out of only a handful of elite law schools. In The Washington Post, Jonathan Adler pulls out a few key insights from the reporting including a close look at which justices are better than their colleagues at diversifying their pool of clerks.
THE WINNER LOSES
|Trump—who once said we would get sick of all his winning—is not having a great day. The White House just announced they will not be moving forward with the nomination of BRETT TALLEY to the U.S. District Court in Alabama. This marks DONALD TRUMP’S first unsuccessful judicial nomination. Talley has faced scrutiny for making insensitive public comments in defense of the Ku Klux Klan, and he also received a rare “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association.