JUSTICES RULE FOR CURTIS FLOWERS, GIVE HIM A SEVENTH CHANCE | How To Crack The SCOTUS Code | Hot New Book On Supreme Court Confirmations
June 21, 2019
SEVENTH TIME'S A CHARM
|Today, the Supreme Court ruled that CURTIS FLOWERS, a man tried six times for murder, deserves another chance because the state prosecutor had improperly kept black people from sitting on the jury. The 7-2 decision was delivered by Trump appointee, JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH, who said black and white potential jurors were not treated equally by prosecutors. He wrote, “The state’s pattern of striking black prospective jurors persisted from Flowers’ first trial through Flowers’ sixth trial. The state’s relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the state wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury.”
A DIFFERENT KIND OF REDEMPTION
|Meanwhile, it was JUSTICES CLARENCE THOMAS and NEIL GORSUCH who dissented in the Flowers case. Thomas wrote, “Today’s decision distorts the record of this case, eviscerates our standard of review, and vacates four murder convictions because the state struck a juror who would have been stricken by any competent attorney.” Justice Thomas broke three years of silence during oral argument of the Flowers case when he asked about whether the defense lawyers used any peremptory challenges to exclude potential jurors. In his dissent Thomas also wrote, “If the court’s opinion today has a redeeming quality, it is this: The state is perfectly free to convict Curtis Flowers again.”
WE'RE MOVING ON UP
|A split SCOTUS also ruled today that property owners can go straight to a federal judge to sue for compensation when a government regulation reduces the value of their property. Voting 5-4, the high court overturned a decades-old precedent that had limited these kinds of lawsuits in federal court. The previous 1985 ruling had found that an individual whose property is taken by a local government cannot file a federal suit under the Fifth Amendment until that challenge fails in state court. But CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS wrote in the majority opinion that giving property owners a right to sue is a crucial step to “restoring taking claims to the full-fledged constitutional status the framers envisioned when they included the clause among the other protections in the Bill of Rights.”
A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME
|Andrew Chung with Reuters reports on today’s property case ruling in which the conservative majority threw out precedent to side with private property owners. He notes the ruling comes amid growing concerns for the future of other Supreme Court precedent such as that which was established by Roe v. Wade in 1973. JUSTICES STEPHEN BREYER and ELENA KAGAN have both expressed concern over SCOTUS turning away from its own stare decisis principle. At the same time, JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS advocated on Monday for the court to reconsider its standard for reviewing precedents.
NOT-SO-SEPARATE
|Mark Joseph Stern with Slate argues that this week’s Supreme Court decision allowing a 40-foot cross to remain on public land put a dent on the whole separation of church and state thing. He notes that although the justices ruled 7-2 to keep the cross in place, “that lopsided vote conceals deep fractures among the justices over the government’s authority to honor and promote religion.”
LET ME BREAK THIS DOWN IN JUST A FEW SECONDS
|“Lost in the shuffle Thursday at the Supreme Court — with the major decision released in a separation of church and state case dominating — was another ruling that could, at some point, have wide ramifications for how American government functions.” Nina Totenberg with NPR covers the high court ruling that said Congress did not overstep its authority in handing off important power to the attorney general under the federal Sex Offender Registration Act. She explains though that there was something of a landmine in the decision that may indicate SCOTUS is ready to “give haters of the ‘deep state'” exactly what they want.
CRACK THE CODE
|CNN’s Joan Biskupic tells us justices often speak in code, but it’s the little hints such coded language can hold that are often the biggest and best indication of how a justice might come down on future cases. She writes, “Sometimes their views are clear, sometimes expressed cryptically.” Biskupic provides a sample of what the justices talk about when they talk about precedent, along with some of their other quirks during oral arguments to help us crack the code.
THE BRIGHT AND SHINY
|Adam Liptak and Jason Kao with The New York Times highlight some of the term’s most important cases and how the justices ruled in each. However, about half of their list are cases that have yet to be publicly ruled on.
HOT NEW BOOK REVIEW
|For The Washington Post, Joan Biskupic reviews a new book from CARL HULSE — “Confirmation Bias” — which “delves deeply into recent confirmation battles, describing the Senate’s advice-and-consent power as ‘corrupted to what appears to be the point of no return.'” The book focuses on the political animals responsible for the high court’s current makeup, notably MITCH MCCONNELL and LEONARD LEO. She refers to the book as “an important guide at this crucial time for the stature of America’s judiciary.”
NOTHING LIKE THE LAST MINUTE
|Yesterday the Trump administration asked SCOTUS to deny a request to send the case over adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census back to a lower court. In the filing to justices, SOLICITOR GENERAL NOEL FRANCISCO accused those challenging the question of trying to derail the court’s process at the last minute. He said in the filing that new evidence suggesting links between a deceased Republican redistricting strategist and the government’s decision to add the question to the 2020 Census amounted to a “conspiracy theory” that was “implausible on its face.” The Commerce Department has said it needs a decision from the Supreme Court on the fate of the citizenship question this summer so that the department has enough time to print all of the questionnaires in time.