Biden Staffs Commission On Court Reform | The Lasting Legacy Of Trump v. Hawaii
January 28, 2021
STUDIES, COMMISSIONS, REPORTS, OH MY!
|Tyler Pager with POLITICO reports PRESIDENT BIDEN is putting together a bipartisan commission to study reforms to the Supreme Court and federal courts. The specific mandate of the commission is still being decided, but some of its members have already been selected. “Among those who will be on the commission are Cristina Rodríguez, a professor at Yale Law School and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Obama Department of Justice, who will join Bauer as co-chair. Caroline Fredrickson, the former president of the American Constitution Society, and Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and a former assistant attorney general in the Bush Department of Justice, will also serve on the commission, those familiar with discussions said.”
THIS ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE
|Jacqueline Thomsen with The National Law Journal reports that as the Biden commission on court reform comes together, some are pushing for it to be comprised of a group more diverse than just a bunch of lawyers. She also suggests that even at this early stage, legal experts aren’t counting on any radical changes to come of the commission.
DON'T YOU REMEMBER
|“One of PRESIDENT BIDEN’S first acts, the repeal of the Trump administration’s ban on entry into the United States by citizens of five predominantly Muslim countries, was a cause for relief, even celebration. But no one who cheers the end of the ban should forget the Supreme Court’s role in keeping it alive for so long.” That’s Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times revisiting in her column this week the permanent history of SCOTUS deciding Trump v. Hawaii in favor of PRESIDENT TRUMP. Greenhouse argues, “The decision resides permanently in United States Reports, the official compilation of Supreme Court rulings. It is available to be dredged up by some future court and cited as precedent to shield from searching scrutiny some future president who invokes national security as a pretext for a policy that stereotypes entire categories of people and shames the country. It is worth revisiting, in other words, not as a window on the past, but as a warning about the future.”
AN OPEN QUESTION
|Ann E. Marimow and Robert Barnes with The Washington Post explore the question of whether a former president can be convicted at an impeachment trial after leaving office. They note the Constitution is “murky” on the matter. “Although many legal scholars take the view that a president can be tried by the Senate even when he is no longer president, they acknowledge there is enough ambiguity in the Constitution for Republicans to embrace as reason not to convict Trump at his trial set to begin Feb. 9. Most who have studied the question think post-presidential impeachment, conviction and disqualification from holding future office is permitted, said Brian C. Kalt, a leading scholar on the subject. But it is far from unanimous because of ambiguous language in the Constitution.”