SCOTUS BIDS KENNEDY A FINAL FAREWELL | WSJ Ed Board On Lorenzo | Double Jeopardy Case Could Impact Manafort’s Future
December 4, 2018
FULL HOUSE
|For SCOTUSblog, Mark Walsh provides us with a “view” from the courtroom, reflecting on all that he saw at the Supreme Court yesterday. The high court was packed full of folks, including a couple distinguished spectators in the crowd as well. Among those spectators was former justice ANTHONY KENNEDY and chairman of the SEC JAY CLAYTON.
SO LONG, FAREWELL
|Robert Barnes with The Washington Post reports that yesterday the Supreme Court bid a final farewell to ANTHONY KENNEDY, formally marking his retirement with an “old-fashioned” exchange of letters read aloud by CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS. Barnes also points out, “The correspondence was signed by all nine justices and comes at a time when the high court is still recovering from the bitter Senate battle that led to the confirmation of the newest justice, Brett M. Kavanaugh. It follows an unusual public exchange last month between the chief justice and President Trump, in which Roberts defended the independence of the judiciary in response to criticism from the president.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal reviews the case known as Lorenzo v. SEC which it refers to as a “textbook example of regulators stretching the law to make an example of an unsympathetic defendant.”
TOP-ED
|Erik Wemple opines in The Washington Post on the Supreme Court’s decision to not hear the appeal of TVEyes in a case also involving Fox News. He takes issue with the “no-thanks decision” that leaves in place a decision that supported a Fox News suit against TVEyes.
A CASE OF THE TERRIBLE TWOS
|An double jeopardy case comes before the justices Thursday, and Pete Williams with NBC News points out that its outcome could affect the prospect of PRESIDENT TRUMPpardoning PAUL MANAFORT. The Fifth Amendment forbids double jeopardy for the same offense, but as Williams points out, “For more than 160 years, the Supreme Court has ruled that being prosecuted once by a state and again in federal court, or the other way around, for the same crime doesn’t violate the provision because the states and the federal government are ‘separate sovereigns.'” So even if the president does pardon Manafort, but it would not free Manafort from being prosecuted at the state level — that is, assuming SCOTUS sticks to its guns and doesn’t overturn its own rule.