CHIEF JUSTICE FLEXES HIS LEADERSHIP MUSCLE | The Intriguing Dynamic Of Gorsuch And Kavanaugh | The Non-Existent History Of Census Delays
June 28, 2019
I'M COMING OUT, I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW
|Well folks, we have ourselves another Supreme Court term down in the books, and the news and commentary just keeps on coming. Adam Liptak with The New York Times says that for the first time since joining the court in 2005, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS assumed true leadership of the court yesterday. “He made clear his influence in a pair of stunning decisions on Thursday, joining the court’s liberal wing in one and his fellow conservatives in the other. In providing the decisive votes and writing the majority opinions in cases on the census and partisan gerrymandering, he demonstrated that he has unquestionably become the court’s ideological fulcrum after the departure last year of JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY.”
TOO MUCH IS HOW MUCH?
|NPR’s Nina Totenberg reviews the week’s two major SCOTUS cases and also notes how the chief justice seemed to approach those decisions. For instance, in the case concerning partisan gerrymandering, Totenberg says Roberts did “nothing to sugarcoat the naked partisan grab for power that both parties engaged in in cases from Republican-controlled North Carolina and Democratic-controlled Maryland.” Even so, Roberts said the courts can’t do anything about partisan gerrymandering even if they wanted to. “To ask the court to intervene in such cases is to ask for an unprecedented expansion of judicial power, he said, adding that it would be next to impossible to determine how much partisanship is too much.”
BRUISED BUT NOT BROKEN
|That’s how Richard Wolf with USA Today is describing the reputation of the Supreme Court at the end of this term. Wolf notes that although this was supposed to be the year SCOTUS took a hard right turn, “the conservative revolution has yet to materialize” as CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS keeps a close handle on the reins. Wolf says, “Rather than pigeon-holing themselves on the left and right, the justices’ myriad voting splits more often resemble a Rorschach test.”
DON'T GO BREAKIN' MY HEART
|“CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS just keeps on breaking conservatives’ hearts.” Josh Gerstein with POLITICO covers the chief justice joining his liberal colleagues more than once this week in rulings that “deeply disappointed” the judicial and political right. He writes, “On Thursday, Roberts stunned many court watchers by invalidating a Trump administration decision to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. Adding to the sting is the fact that the chief justice wasn’t just along for the ride on the closely watched ruling: He penned the majority opinion, which essentially accused Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross of lying about his reasons for seeking to add the question on citizenship.”
DON'T GIVE A DAMN 'BOUT MY BAD REPUTATION
|“Of all the dynamics at play in the Supreme Court’s just-concluded term, none was more intriguing than this latest chapter in the story of JUSTICES NEIL M. GORSUCH and BRETT M. KAVANAUGH.” That’s Leah Litman writing for The Washington Post about this particularly prickly dynamic at the high court and why it is so important for us to watch as it plays out. She notes, “Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were always going to alter the balance of the court in ways that would reverberate for years to come. And this term revealed that their ongoing disagreements may have an unexpected impact on the court’s reputation.”
POWER UP, BABY
|“The Supreme Court, gerrymandering, and the Republican turn against democracy” — that’s the headline from Zack Beauchamp with Vox. He says, “Gerrymandering is just one piece of a much broader GOP offensive to rig the system in their favor. This isn’t some kind of master plan to destroy democracy so much as a series of discrete tactics, each a power grab in its own right, that add up to imperil American democracy itself.” Not because the GOP is anti-democracy, he says, but because it is so focused on its own power.
NEVER NOT ONCE
|Following the Supreme Court’s ruling to block for now a citizenship question from being added to the 2020 census, PRESIDENT TRUMP took to tweeting about the outcome. The president said he asked “the lawyers” if the 2020 census could be delayed, “no matter how long.” But Gillian Brockell with The Washington Post reports that in 220-plus years there has never been a delay to the census — not in the lead-up to the Civil War, not during the Great Depression, not for any reason at all, she says.
SCOTUS VIEWS
The Gerrymandering Decision Drags The Supreme Court Further Into the Mud
The New York Times“The Supreme Court decision on Thursday in Rucho v. Common Cause purports to take federal courts out of the business of policing partisan gerrymanders and leave the issue for states to handle. But the decision will instead push federal courts further into the political thicket, and, in states with substantial minority voter populations, force courts to make logically impossible determinations about whether racial reasons or partisan motives predominate when a party gerrymanders for political advantage. It didn’t have to be this way.”
The Constitutional Call On Gerrymanders
The Wall Street Journal“There are also political remedies for political gerrymanders. Politicians can elevate extreme redistricting as a campaign issue and offer solutions that don’t rely on judges. Florida added a ‘fair districts’ amendment to its constitution. Some states have given the task of drawing lines to a neutral commission or a demographer. Congress could even pass a law forcing such changes. Partisan gerrymandering can be ugly, in other words, but not every problem is the Supreme Court’s job to fix.”
The Supreme Court Has Failed The Constitution
The Washington Post“When the framers drafted the elections clause, they did not imagine today’s supercharged, software-aided, partisan gerrymandering. But they certainly thought, as a bedrock principle, that the people, in the states and in Congress, had the power to act.”
The Gerrymandering Ruling Was Bad, But The Alternatives Were Worse
The Atlantic“The Supreme Court made a painfully flawed decision Thursday on partisan gerrymandering. In fact, the decision has only one point in its favor: It is better than the alternatives. There was no good answer, but the Court chose the least bad one. If that sounds like a reluctant endorsement, it is.”