CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS, Trump’s Nightmare on First Street | The Slants at SCOTUS Today
January 18, 2016
KEEPIN IT CLASSY
|Don’t expect the Supreme Court justices to boycott DONALD TRUMP’S inauguration Friday, as all eight are expected to attend the festivities. Bear in mind that during the campaign Trump very publicly criticized CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS, calling him a “nightmare for conservatives.” Trump was also the subject of criticism from JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG who called the then Republican nominee a “faker.”
THE NIGHTMARE ON FIRST STREET
|Speaking of CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS, Marcia Coyle with The National Law Journal reports the chief will carry out the tradition of swearing in our next president on Friday, even though DONALD TRUMP has called him everything from a “nightmare” to “a dummy” to an “absolute disaster.” But as Coyle points out, Roberts is “the Mr. Cool of the Supreme Court bench: cautious and careful, dignified and rarely flustered.” She does however add one caveat: “Well, that is if you discount his flubbing of the oath delivered to BARACK OBAMA in January 2009.”
TODAY AT SCOTUS
|With only three days left Justices must wrestle with issues of free speech and trademark registration, hearing arguments today over whether Congress and the Patent and Trademark Office may refuse to register trademarks that disparage people or their beliefs. The case was brought forth by a band called The Slants seeking to register a trademark on its name. The band leader, SIMON TAM, says he chose the name to reclaim the insulting term and turn it into a badge of honor.
TOP-ED
|Making his case, for himself and his band, SIMON TAM of the Slants writes for NBC News, “Our legal system on trademark law feels like a prison created to keep disruptive ideas from coming into the mainstream.” Rock on, Simon. Rock on. Read his full editorial here.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times is picking sides in today’s major SCOTUS battle, arguing the power to grant trademarks does not provide a license to censor speech protected by the First Amendment. “Under the 1st Amendment, the government can’t pick and choose which speech will be protected and which will be penalized. A trademark amounts to no more of a government endorsement of a point of view than a patent for an invention, a copyright for a book or a permit to hold a rally. The court should remind the patent office that its proper role is to protect intellectual property rights; it’s not a censor.”
ICYMI
|Adam Liptak with The New York Times reports the justices heard a case yesterday that involves the government’s authority to deport immigrants who commit serious crimes, having to consider whether a federal law on the subject was unconstitutionally vague.
BETTER HAVE MY MONEY
|Also on Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard a case addressing whether debt collectors are abusing the bankruptcy process when they ask a person to pay a bill so old it is no longer collectible under state laws. Put plainly by JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR during arguments: “I’m having a great deal of difficulty with this business model. You filed a claim and you hope the trustee doesn’t see that it’s out of time?”
CAMERAS IN THE COURTROOM
|“It’s becoming something of a tradition: every new Congress proposes a bipartisan bill to put cameras in the Supreme Court. The bill always goes nowhere. The Court treats transparency like it’s an assault. I find it insulting that nine people who presume to tell me what expectation of privacy I have when I text my boss feel like they have the right to conduct public hearings outside the withering glare of C-SPAN, but they do.” That’s Elie Mystal writing for Above the Law.
TAKIN' NAMES, TAKIN' MEETINGS
|Wasting no time at all, DONALD TRUMP met Saturday with one of the judges on his short list for potential Supreme Court nominees. JUDGE WILLIAM PRYOR on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals met with Trump in New York less than two weeks before Trump has said we can expect him to announce his SCOTUS pick.
THE END OF AN ERA
|Today is the first time in eleven months that JUDGE MERRICK GARLAND will hear a case. He returns to work work work work work today, taking back his seat on the bench of the D.C. Circuit for the first time since PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA called him up to join the highest court in the land. SCOTUSDaily salutes you, MG.
OTHER NEWS
Should We Be Able to Reclaim a Racist Insult — as a Registered Trademark?
The New York Times Magazine“The stories of the Slants’ and Dykes on Bikes’ struggles with the trademark office are cringe-worthy because they’re stories in which a stolid bureaucratic agency must grapple with one of the more complex questions of our modern age: whether a marginalized group can take a slur back.”
Supreme Court case sets the stage for future officials' accountability
The Washington Post“The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether companies can use employment contracts to prohibit workers from banding together to take legal action over workplace issues.”