The Problem With Biden’s Court Commission | Justices Split Over California COVID-19 Restrictions
February 8, 2021
WHERE IDEAS GO TO DIE
|John Fritze with USA Today reports on PRESIDENT BIDEN’S commission to study court reform, noting some progressives in favor of sweeping changes to the judiciary are skeptical over its composition and timeline. AARON BELKIN with Take Back the Court said his group is concerned because “commissions are often places ideas go to die.” Fritze with USA Today writes, “The push for change – more justices or term limits or a code of ethics are among the ideas the groups are seeking – has put a squeeze on the Biden White House, emphasizing the gap between liberals who want the new president to mitigate the outsized impact former PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP had on the federal judiciary and a new administration that won power in part on a promise of moderate leadership.”
STAY IN YOUR LANE
|Late on Friday, SCOTUS blocked California’s public health ban on indoor religious services. Mark Joseph Stern with Slate notes that in its split 6-3 decision, the justices “effectively tossed out decades of case law…unsettling precedent that states have relied upon to craft COVID restrictions.” JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN made her position in the dispute loud and clear. In her dissent — joined by SONIA SOTOMAYOR and STEPHEN BREYER — she accused her colleagues of endangering lives and potentially facilitating the spread of the deadly virus. Kagan: “To state the obvious, judges do not know what scientists and public health experts do. So it is alarming that the Court second-guesses the judgments of expert officials, and displaces their conclusions with its own. In the worst public health crisis in a century, this foray into armchair epidemiology cannot end well.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|Meanwhile, the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal is applauding the Supreme Court’s decision regarding California’s COVID-19 restrictions arguing, “Politicians are increasingly trying to restrict core American liberties, and the courts are a last line of defense.” In a statement joined by JUSTICES THOMAS and ALITO, NEIL GORSUCH wrote, “Of course we are not scientists, but neither may we abandon the field when government officials with experts in tow seek to infringe a constitutionally protected liberty.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
We Sued Trump for Emoluments Violations. That Fight’s Just Getting Started.
POLITICO“Three and a half years ago, we took President Donald Trump to court over unconstitutional payments he received from foreign and domestic governments through his hotel in downtown D.C. while serving as president. Recently, the Supreme Court declared that our lawsuit and Trump’s appeal of it were moot given that President Joe Biden had taken office. Trump’s departure from the White House may have effectively terminated the case against him, but we still secured a significant victory: Judge Peter J. Messitte of the Maryland federal district court ruled in 2018, the year after we filed suit, that the Constitution forbids the president from receiving anything of value from a foreign or domestic government.”
Trump's Senate Impeachment Trial Is A Referendum On Voters' Constitutional Responsibility
NBC News“Trump’s Senate brief raises at least four distinct constitutional objections to his potential conviction — whether a former president can even be tried, whether the chief justice has to preside, whether a president can be impeached for constitutionally protected speech and, if not, whether his speech actually was protected by the First Amendment. And unlike most constitutional disputes, in which resolution of those objections would ultimately be up to the Supreme Court, here, it’s entirely up to the Senate — because the Supreme Court has held that courts have no role in supervising impeachment proceedings. Thus, even though the overwhelming consensus of constitutional scholars is that each of Trump’s constitutional arguments is meritless, that’s just not going to matter so long as 34 or more senators conclude otherwise.”