SCOTUS CLEANING UP AFTER CONGRESS | Two Ways Of Looking At Gerrymandering | The Weakness Of Trump’s Travel Ban
January 4, 2018
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1904, the Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Ricans were not aliens and could enter the United States freely. However, the high court stopped short of declaring them citizens — that wouldn’t happen until 1917.
THE ANEMONE OF MY ANEMONE IS MY FRIEND
|“On the same day in late November, the Supreme Court came face to face twice with a familiar nemesis: Congress.” Richard Wolf with USA Today reflects upon the day in which both JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO and JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN took jabs at the legislature in oral arguments for two different cases. As Wolf puts it, “For the justices, it was all in a day’s work. Much of what they do for a living is clean up after Congress.”
YOU'VE GOTTA FIGHT, FOR YOUR RIGHT, TO VOOOOTE
|On January 10, the justices will hear arguments in a case that has become a proxy for the highly partisan fight over election rules, and more specifically, over the rules in place to prevent voter fraud. Republicans want more of these rules, while Democrats argue that these rules would in actuality suppress, and even eliminate, the right to vote of some liberals and minorities. Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr previews the upcoming case out of Ohio which he says will “shape the rights of thousands of people as the 2018 elections approach.”
TOP-ED
|In The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse writes on what she sees as two ways of looking at gerrymandering. In her piece, she notes that “the best news to come out of the Supreme Court in months” was its decision to take up a second partisan gerrymandering case out of Maryland — a case Greenhouse predicts will be more important than the Wisconsin case justices heard in October of last year.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|OTHER NEWS
Students Identify With 50-Year-Old Supreme Court Case
NPR“Four years later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 7-to-2 vote for Tinker, affirming the principle that schoolchildren do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’ Students cannot be censored, the court said, unless their speech is disruptive.”
Kids Need Miranda Rights They Can Understand
BloombergView“It’s been more than half a century since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda decision affirming a suspect’s right to counsel and a separate ruling affirming a right to counsel in juvenile court. It’s long past time for U.S. law enforcement agencies to adopt simpler language, and clearer procedures, to enable juveniles to exercise those rights.”