JUSTICES IN CONFERENCE TOMORROW | Is SCOTUS Trump’s Enabler? | RBG Tour Continues
February 15, 2018
ANOTHER LOSS
|A second federal appeals court ruled against PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S third installment of his travel ban and noted that the executive order is likely unconstitutional because it was driven by anti-Muslim animus. The 9-4 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling called for the ban to be put on hold pending Supreme Court review — justices have already agreed to consider the administration’s appeal after the Ninth Circuit ruled in December that the ban violates federal law.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
|“Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of Brooklyn complicated the justices’ debate by issuing a second nationwide injunction barring rescission of the DACA program. How Judge Garaufis’ ruling will impact Supreme Court deliberations on the Justice Department’s petition for review of the Alsup injunction is not at all obvious. Remember, the Justice Department wants the court to do something extraordinary, leapfrogging the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to take up an interlocutory trial court decision.” That’s Alison Frankel with Reuters tying together all the pieces ahead of tomorrow’s SCOTUS conference where the justices will review the appeal to overturn the injunction that leaves in place the DACA program.
TRUMP'S ENABLER
|In The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse considers how the justices will respond to the Trump administrations’ unusual request for the court to intervene in the debate over the fate of the nearly 800,000 Dreamers brough into this country by their parents. The justices will debate such intervention when they get back to work on Friday, and Greenhouse wonders if the Supreme Court is turning into something of an enabler for MR. TRUMP and his agenda. “The justices’ response — which may come as early as Monday — will tell us more clearly than anything since Inauguration Day what stance the rule-bound court is prepared to take toward the norm-breaking president. Will the Roberts court serve as Donald Trump’s enabler? Or will the court see itself, as it has on rare occasions at other troubled times in the country’s history, as a firewall between the president and the rule of law? With its overheated language and repeated reference to “the ongoing violation of federal law by more than half a million people,” the petition the administration filed last month reads not so much as a legal document but as a recruiting brochure, aimed at a very small but immensely powerful audience of nine.”
IN CONVERSATION WITH RBG
|This week, the NOTORIOUS RBG spoke with The Atlantic contributing editor Jeffrey Rosen at length about her perspective on the #MeToo movement, her affection for Millennials and some of the Supreme Court cases she’d like to see overturned. Get a rare glimpse of a public conversation with a Supreme Court justice and read their conversation.
DO IT BETTER FASTER STRONGER
|Wanna workout like JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG? Well for those of you in Washington state (looking at you law school Huskies), head out The Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle this weekend where the justice’s personal trainer will be signing his new book, “The RBG Workout: How She Stays Strong…And You Can, Too!” Nicole Brodeur with The Seattle Times previews the event and talks about the intense workout Bryant Johnson tailored for the high court’s eldest justice.
SCOTUS VIEWS
Government Unions Are In Deep Trouble And They Have Themselves To Blame.
The Washington Post“Over the past four decades, unionism has made life better for many public employees. It has also made state and local government bigger, costlier and more complex — and more beholden, politically, to its own workforce. Fittingly, Janus pits a union critic against AFSCME’s Illinois chapter — that is, a famously aggressive, and powerful, union in a blue state where public-sector labor costs, especially for pensions, have created a seemingly permanent financial crisis.”
The Bogus 'Free Speech' Argument Against Unions
The Atlantic“Free speech has no fiercer advocate than Professor Eugene Volokh of the University of California at Los Angeles. As a teacher of First Amendment law, director of a First Amendment amicus brief clinic, and a founder of the libertarian-leaning Volokh Conspiracy blog, Volokh lets almost no free-speech sparrow fall anywhere in the U.S. without weighing in, usually against government and in favor of free speech objectors. Supreme Court justices have cited his opinions six times. From personal experience, I know him to be merciless when he deems a fellow academic insufficiently militant in defense of speech values. So when Volokh weighs in before the Supreme Court in opposition to a free-speech claim, that fact should spur a careful look on all sides.”