WHY THIS RETIREMENT IS SO DIFFERENT | Abortion Already On Its Way Out | Cory Booker Calls For Senate To Pause Confirmation
June 29, 2018
UNLIKE ANYTHING
|In case you were wondering, it’s true that America has endured a similar occasion before: facing a momentous resignation from the Supreme Court that sends shockwaves throughout government. But Deanna Paul notes in The Washington Post that we have never been at such a crossroads; that somehow JUSTICE KENNEDY’S resignation is far different than anything our country has ever faced. Read her report on the implications of losing Kennedy as she looks back at other important shifts on the high court.
THE ROAD NOT YET TAKEN
|The staff of The Washington Post explains what the path ahead for the next Supreme Court justice looks like, including the number of votes he or she needs now that the filibuster is gone (h/t MITCH MCCONNELL).
WHO NEEDS BIPARTISANSHIP ANYWAY
|“Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement puts Democrats on the losing end of a yearslong power struggle over the Senate’s filibuster rules. When the Senate votes this fall to fill Justice Kennedy’s seat, only a simple majority, likely 50 votes in this case, will be required to confirm Mr. Trump’s pick.” That’s Joshua Jamerson reporting in The Wall Street Journal on the tortured history of the United States Senate that led to the nuclear blowout of the filibuster and the entrenched partisanship that has made compromise obsolete.
DON'T BOO, VOTE
|Since the Senate doesn’t need Democrats to accomplish anything — including a change to the makeup of the most important court (and, ahem, maybe even branch of government) in our country — some Dems are feeling doomed. But Francis Wilkinson opines for Bloomberg that chins should be up, because although there is no silver lining in this situation for liberals, “there is also no cause for panic or despair.” Instead, there should be great, determined focus on rocking the vote in November.
SLOW MOTION FOR ME
|Carter Sherman with VICE News explains in his latest how JUSTICE KENNEDY’S retirement is sure to the push the war over abortion into overdrive.
JUST A LITTLE TOO LATE
|Turns out, the plan to overturn Roe v. Wade is already on the fast track. CNN’s Clare Foran reports that state legislatures have already made successful efforts to limit women’s access to abortion procedures, hoping new legislation will trigger a successful challenge to the court’s precedent on the issue. She quotes JEFFREY TOOBIN who predicted earlier this week that abortion will be outlawed in 20 states in just 18 months. He also said, “I think it’s virtually certain that some or all of those laws will wind up before the Supreme Court. And they will get a much more favorable reception with any of the judges on President Trump’s list of 25 possible nominees.”
SURVEY SAYS
|But most Americans actually support Roe v. Wade and want women to have access to abortions. A new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 67 percent support the ruling that legalized abortion rights for the whole country, while only 29 percent would like the Supreme Court to overturn it. Maggie Fox with NBC News reports.
JESUS TAKES THE WHEEL
|In The New York Times, Kent Greenfield and Adam Winkler note that with JUSTICE KENNEDY gone, the future of gay rights is fragile — at best. His legacy on gay rights is almost certainly gone because even without overturning his signature cases on the issue, his decisions “can be narrowed and their implications minimized.” They recall a time when JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR remarked on her leaving the Supreme Court. “Back in 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United overturned one of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s campaign finance opinions, she lamented her retirement, saying, ‘Gosh, I step away for a couple of years and there’s no telling what’s going to happen.’ It may be Justice Kennedy — and those Americans who’ve found protections and respect in his decisions — with similar regrets in the years to come.”
I'M STARTING WITH THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE
|“When the Supreme Court hears cases, delivers opinions or even poses for a group photo, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS is the man in the middle — literally. With the retirement of ASSOCIATE JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY, the court’s most influential member by virtue of his ‘swing vote’ status, Roberts will move to the middle figuratively as well.” Another masterful hook from USA Today’s Richard Wolf. He explains that given the president is likely to pick someone in the mold of the late JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA, Roberts will likely inherit the court’s swing vote in the center.
TAKING BACK THE TITLE
|Similarly, Robert Barnes with The Washington Post quotes DANIEL EPPS of First Mondays who said, “If it wasn’t the Roberts court already, it is the Roberts court now, and it will be for a generation.” Roberts explains: “With Roberts as the median justice, one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in history will almost surely move further to the right. And if the chief justice’s past is prologue, that could mean more restrictions on abortion rights, affirmative action contained or ended, gay rights more closely scrutinized, and states freer to alter voting laws and redistricting without judicial oversight.”
OFF TO THE RACES
|“The search for DONALD TRUMP’S next Supreme Court nominee is beginning where it left off last year, with some candidates the president strongly considered before settling on NOW-JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH, people close to the process say.” That’s Jess Bravin with The Wall Street Journal reporting the White House is already narrowing its list of potential nominees for the Supreme Court, hoping to get someone appointed to the bench before the midterms this fall.
A FAMILIAR FACE
|Zoe Tillman with Buzzfeed reports that the White House will start interviewing Supreme Court candidates next week, according to the GOP’s resident SCOTUS nomination expert, LEONARD LEO. Tillman writes, “The White House is freshening up its research on Trump’s short list of 25 names, and interviews with candidates will start next week, Leo said in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News on Thursday. There is ‘pressure’ to announce a nominee within the next two to three weeks, he said, before Trump leaves for the NATO summit in mid-July.”
HOLD YOUR HORSES
|Someone in the Senate isn’t ready to give up the gun just yet. SENATOR CORY BOOKER raised his hand already calling for a delay in the nomination and asked that the Senate “push pause” on confirming a new justice until after the completion of the Russia investigation. His argument? Avoid a constitutional crisis and see what comes of the criminal investigation into the president first.
LEST WE FORGET
|It may be hard to focus on now, but there was a flurry of important news from SCOTUS this week BEFORE the news of JUSTICE KENNEDY’S retirement. The justices handed down a number of significant decisions, including Janus v. AFSME which said non-union members do not have to pay “fair share” fees to public-sector unions. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports in The Washington Post that Congressional Democrats mobilized Thursday to combat the implications of Janus and introduced a bill to protect the ability of public employees to form, join or assist labor organizations without fear of reprisal.
SCOTUS VIEWS
Behold The Priest-Kings Of The Future Supreme Court
The Washington Post“One can easily imagine a 24th-century American civics class in which the teaching bot is struggling to explain how the United States passed from having a roughly representative democracy into the more modern arrangement of having the priest-kings of the Supreme Court make all the important laws. Or perhaps you can’t imagine it. But really, it shouldn’t be that hard. It’s a relatively simple extrapolation from current trends toward presidential-election-as-judicial-election and policy-preference-as-constitutional-right.”
Justice Kennedy Chose To Let Trump Pick His Replacement. That's His Legacy.
HuffPOst“By retiring now, at the end of the spring 2018 term, Kennedy has made a clear and indisputable statement: He wants Trump to be able to appoint his successor, and he wants the closely divided Senate to confirm that candidate before the November midterms. That body has confirmed nearly every single administrative and judicial nominee the president has sent them ― no matter how repugnant the candidate’s values or lacking their experience ― and there’s no reason to think the outcome will be different now.”
There Was One Unifying Theme Of Anthony Kennedy's Jurisprudence
The Washington Post“That is, he spent 30 years on the court asking government to treat citizens with dignity and citizens to respect one another, yet even he could not quite identify a certain template for doing so — just when we really need one. And then he retired.”
What Teachers' Unions Should Expect From The Supreme Court's 'Opt-In' Ruling
The Hill“Make no mistake, Janus is an unequivocal loss for unions. With no middle path to balance the free rider challenge unions face, Janus offers a legal solution, but leaves serious practical questions unresolved. Anti-union forces will certainly celebrate the ruling, and unions will decry it, but many in the middle may come to see this as an overcorrection, one that will force teachers’ unions to reinvent themselves to retain their once monumental influence.”
Workers Are Free At Last — To Sink
The Washington Post“There are different kinds of freedom particular to different kinds of things. To flourish, people need the freedom that enables us to be the way we are: social, creative, communicative. In the Supreme Court’s latest blow to organized labor, that kind of freedom has been bought and scrapped by businesspeople who cloaked the transaction in the language of liberty.”