SO READY FOR SPRING AT SCOTUS | The Least Surprising Case On Docket This Year | RBG Sporting SCOTUS Swag Last Night
February 2, 2018
SO MUCH FOR SPRING
|Well folks, PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL says we’re headed for six more weeks of winter — which comes as something of a joke to those of us sitting in sunny, 80 degree weather right now. And while this may not seem so funny to those of you shivering in your boots, I think we can all agree we’re ready for Spring and its big decision days — the greatest time of year at the Supreme Court. Until then, we still have some juicy cases to keep us busy, with major oral arguments scheduled for later this month.
NO SURPRISES HERE
|Steven Mazie writes for The Economist that of all of big blockbuster cases on the SCOTUS docket this term, the one that will decide the fate of public sector unions promises to be the least surprising of all. He notes that JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH is expected to “help pull the plug” on unions and join his conservative colleagues in ruling that “workers should not be compelled to subsidise in union negotiations any more than they are required to pay for efforts to elect candidates or advocate for political causes.”
SCOTUS SWAG
|Last night, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG carried an “I dissent” tote bag on stage before an audience of about 1,400 people at the Adas Israel synagogue in Washington. The justice spoke of judicial independence and referred to the federal judiciary as “our nation’s hallmark and pride.” She also said, “The genius of our Constitution is that this concept of ‘We the people’ has become ever more embracive. Think about what it was in the beginning … I’d like to see in the Constitution a statement that men and women are people of equal citizenship stature. I’d like to see an equal rights amendment in our Constitution.”
A PATH FORWARD
|Tony Mauro with The National Law Journal follows up his reporting on the lack of diversity amongst SCOTUS clerks with a new piece that focuses on minority attorneys’ response to the issue. Howard University School of Law Dean Danielle Holley-Walker responded to NLJ’s research on the topic with a call for justices to state publicly that they want greater diversity among their law clerks. “The first step,” Holley-Walker, a Harvard Law alum, said, “is always to say, ‘This is something that is important to us. We want to see a change happen and we are committed to taking steps to make a difference in terms of the makeup of our clerks.’ That is not something that I’ve heard expressed by many of the justices.”