HBD RBG | Scalia Losing His Legacy | Kennedy Retirement Rumor Republicans’ Lonely Hope
March 15, 2018
SCALIA'S LAST DAY
|Executive Director of Fix the Court, GABE ROTH, exclusively obtained and analyzed new documents from the U.S. Marshals Service which document the security provided for justices when they travel. The documents reveal confusion and a lack of coordination after the death of JUSTICE ANTONTIN SCALIA in February of 2016. Roth says the request for the documents stemmed from the concern that justices may not have adequate coverage at a time when threats against public figures are on the rise and when frequent health monitoring for the aging justices is paramount.
TOP-ED
|“The legacy of Justice Antonin Scalia, two years after his death, is being erased as well.” That’s Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times writing on what’s left of the late justice’s legacy — particularly on legislative history. “With a handful of exceptions, most notably his 2008 majority opinion that established a right under the Second Amendment to keep a handgun at home for self-defense, Justice Scalia’s 30-year Supreme Court tenure left surprisingly little imprint on the law in terms of majority opinions that bear his name. Invited to assess his legacy, his admirers invariably point to the influence of his insistence on originalism in constitutional interpretation and textualism for statutes. Debates over how to read the Constitution preceded Antonin Scalia and will be with us forever. But the debate about legislative history is a fading memory.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times weighs in on a possible SCOTUS decision that could cut off beach access to the public. An outcome that the Ed Board says would be “unconscionable.”
A LONELY HOPE
|Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick writes that rumors of a JUSTICE KENNEDY retirement are just about the only thing keeping Republicans’ hopes in the era of Trump. She notes, “Kennedy, too, is mulling his departure at a time when anyone in government who isn’t mulling a departure isn’t doing her job right. But Kennedy’s thinking—over and above the thorny questions of his own doctrinal legacy, his responsibility in the Trump era, and his longstanding dedication to the rule of law—must be immensely confounded by one other thing: He is the most important man in the only functioning branch of government left in America. At a moment when every other ‘adult in the room’ is either colluding or being fired, he is, by dint of lifetime tenure, pretty much the only bulletproof adult left in America. Justice Kennedy takes his adulthood very seriously. And unless he believes there are abundant stores of serious people that Trump has secretly held in reserve, that cannot be a trivial concern for him.”
HBD RBG
|Today the eldest member of the Supreme Court, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG, turns 85 years old. Happy Birthday, RBG — stay Notorious.
OTHER NEWS
Supreme Court Justices Disagree—On These Three Writing Tools
The National Law Journal“Justice Elena Kagan adds an apostrophe and ‘s’ to the possessive of Congress. Justice Clarence Thomas only adds an apostrophe. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. uses sentence fragments for effect—’Tough as a three-dollar steak.’ You won’t find fragments in the opinions of Justice Anthony Kennedy in recent terms.”