TRUMP SAYS HE’S DOWN TO THREE | ICYMI, The Hot Bench with Robert Barnes
December 2, 2016
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
|Thursday, DONALD TRUMP told Sean Hannity on Fox News that he’s narrowed his choices for a Supreme Court nominee to “three or four” candidates, and that a decision would be coming “pretty soon.” Trump assured Hannity that his final choice would be a constitutional originalist.
LOOK BACK AT IT
|Bloomberg’s Kimberly Robinson delivers us a recap of the week at the Supreme Court, and she says this week was notable for just how busy it was. “And by ‘busy,'” she writes, “I mean not busy.” The justices carried a light load this week, making it something of a trend for the term. Robinson notes, “In fact, the court’s 20 arguments so far this term are the lowest number for the past decade.”
ICYMI – SCOTUS ISN'T HERMITVILLE
|Yesterday, SCOTUSDaily shared its latest Hot Bench interview in which we spoke with ROBERT BARNES of The Washington Post. He urged that the Supreme Court isn’t the “Hermitville” you might expect it to be and that he would never dream of giving the court advice on what it should do in their jobs because he wouldn’t want them to tell him what to do in his. And when asked if he had a favorite justice, Barnes said he doesn’t have a one, although he noted, “I think they’re all pretty interesting, and it’s interesting to see how differently they all approach their work. When I first started covering this beat, I was afraid that I would read some tough case and be clueless about what the right answer was, and what I have learned from covering the court for a while is that there is no right answer. If these very smart people looking at the exact same facts can split 5-4 on something, it just shows you that there isn’t a real right answer.” Catch our full interview here.
OTHER NEWS
A Day in Court with Judge Margaret Ryan, Possible Scotus Nominee
The National Law Journal“Ryan is one of 20 judges President-elect Donald Trump has named as possible nominees to the high court. A former active duty U.S. Marine and judge advocate general, clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and a private practitioner, Ryan is also the only judge on the Trump list who sits on a court in Washington.”