NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING HONORS PRESIDENT BUSH | Double Jeopardy At SCOTUS Tomorrow | More Partisan Gerrymandering Battles
December 5, 2018
DAY OF MOURNING
|Today the federal government is honoring the passing of PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH with a National Day of Mourning coinciding with his funeral. The New York Times explains what today will mean and and the history behind the marking of presidents’ deaths.
SIDE EFFECTS
|The Supreme Court is closed today to honor Bush, but tomorrow it will consider a really big case over double jeopardy that could have a “spillover effect” on the pending Russia investigation. AP’s Mark Sherman explains, “At issue is whether to overturn a court-created exception to the Constitution’s double-jeopardy bar that allows state and federal prosecutions for the same crime. The court’s ruling could be relevant if President Donald Trump were to pardon someone implicated in special counsel ROBERT MUELLER’S probe and a state wanted to pursue its own charges against that person.”
EYE ON THE PRIZE
|Garrett Epps with The Atlantic also looks into tomorrow’s double jeopardy case. He says that even though the case is “so straightforward that neither side wastes any time discussing it…appellate courts would do well to be aware that easy cases sometimes make bad law.”
DENYING DEMOCRACY
|For Constitution Daily, Lyle Denniston looks into a new partisan gerrymandering case that came before justices this week. Monday, Maryland officials asked SCOTUS to rule that its existing map can be used again in 2020 despite a lower court ruling that it is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The appeal argues that a new map would have to be drawn after the 2020 census anyway, so Maryland shouldn’t have to craft another one in the meantime for just one election. Because elections don’t matter, or…?