JUSTICES TAKE FAMILY PHOTO WITH THE NEW GUY | Justice Kennedy, The Most Important Man In America
June 1, 2017
PICTURE THIS
|The Supreme Court justices sat for a family photo this week, taking the first official photo of the group since JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH took his place on the high court’s bench. Must say, it’s hard to miss the tall man on the right.
HOW THEY MAKE THE SAUSAGE
|Olivier Laurent for TIME reports on how the Supreme Court’s official photo was taken, dissecting the process by which the nine justices got their pearly whites in order for a picture perfect moment. The entire shoot takes only two minutes, but it was enough time for the justices to crack some jokes and lighten the mood. However, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG was apparently the most serious of the group, being the only person in the room “who shows the gravity of who [the justices] are and what they represent.”
I'M LIVIN IN THE 21ST CENTURY DOIN SOMETHING MEAN TO IT
|The Supreme Court just announced that the justices’ annual disclosure reports will be released next Thursday via thumb drives (!). On Twitter, USA Today’s Richard Wolf noted, “Supreme Court Enters 21st Century,” while Fix the Court called the move a “victory for transparency.”
WON'T YOU STAY WITH ME, CUZ YOU'RE ALL I NEED
|Move over Mr. President, right now, JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY is the most important man in America. Some of his former clerks have said that the justice — who turns 81 in July — is thinking about retirement, but liberal activists are doing everything they can to keep his butt on the bench. “Liberals are lionizing Kennedy and his legacy in the media. Some are reaching out to former Kennedy clerks and others who know him, asking them to urge him not to retire, said Michele Jawando, a legal advocate at the Center for American Progress think tank in Washington. One former Kennedy clerk confirmed being asked to urge him to stay on and said other clerks had asked him to do so. Other clerks said they had not been approached by liberal activists.”
HOPING, AND WAITING, AND WISHING
|“The Trump Administration legal team signaled on Wednesday that it will soon pursue an appeal to the Supreme Court to defend the presidential order limiting immigration of foreign nationals from six Mideast nations.” That’s Lyle Denniston for Constitution Daily reporting on the continuing story of the legal battle over DONALD TRUMP’S travel ban.
SAY WHAT?!
|But Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner points out that while the Justice Department is saying the Supreme Court is likely to review Trump’s travel ban, it has still yet to ask the Supreme Court to consider it in the first place. “Review is optional,” Geidner writes. “It would take the vote of four justices to agree to hear the case and five justices to grant a stay. In addition to the fact that the Supreme Court doesn’t have to hear the case, it also is possible that the justices would prefer to hear another case — still pending — out of the Ninth Circuit, which addresses more of the executive order than does the Fourth Circuit case (which only addresses one subsection of the order).”