SUPREME COURT IS NO SNOWFLAKE | RBG Gets A Workout In With Stephen Colbert | Hypocrisy Of Slapping Down Sotomayor
March 22, 2018
DO YOU WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAN
|“The Supreme Court is no snowflake,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg writes explaining that while most of D.C. took a snow day yesterday, the work went on at the highest court in America. She writes, “At the Supreme Court, snow is simply not considered an excuse for failure to function. Most old-timers give the credit (or blame) for that to the late CHIEF JUSTICE WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST. Rehnquist, who grew up in snowy Wisconsin, viewed Washington’s fear of falling snow as totally ridiculous. Even in near-blizzard conditions, if necessary, he would send out court SUVs to pick up the justices and other court personnel to ensure that there was no interruption in the schedule. And woe be to the lawyer scheduled to argue a case who thought he or she could easily beg off on grounds of difficult transport.”
PARTY FOUL
|During Tuesday’s arguments, JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR got in some hot water with her colleague, JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY, for noting that she surfed the web to look up one of the pregnancy centers involved in the case. Kennedy remarked, “Well, in this case I didn’t go beyond the record to look on the internet because I don’t think we should do that.” But AP’s Mark Sherman and Jessica Greskoreport that Sotomayor was only following the lead of her chief who did something similar seven years ago. Only then, “no one uttered a peep.”
WHY'D YOU HAVE TO GO AND MAKE THINGS SO COMPLICATED
|“The Supreme Court’s complicated, often unpredictable approach to the death penalty was evident this week when a three-day period produced decisions where different combinations of justices alternately upheld, halted and questioned executions on an array of grounds.” That’s Jess Bravin with The Wall Street Journal reporting on the justices’ difficult and sometimes confused relationship with the death penalty — an issue that continues to evade consensus among members of the court.
SWEAT BABY SWEAT BABY
|The Late Show with Stephen Colbert featured the show’s host doing a workout with JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG who turned 85 last week. STEPHEN COLBERT struggled through planks while the court’s eldest justice showed him why she’s such a famous gym rat. And when Colbert tried to get the justice pumped up to “Gonna Make You Sweat” by C+C Music Factory, the justice politely asked him to turn off the noise so she could return to her usual operatic playlist.
OTHER NEWS
Budget Bill Likely Would End Supreme Court Email Search Case
The Associated Press“The budget bill before Congress includes an update to federal law that makes clear that authorities with a warrant can obtain emails and other data held by American technology companies but stored on servers overseas. Passage of the Cloud Act probably would end a Supreme Court dispute between Microsoft and the Trump administration over emails the government wants as part of a drug trafficking investigation.”
"Trump Is Stirring The Pot": The Hot-Button Supreme Court Case That Could Explode The Culture Wars
Vanity Fair“The conservative movement’s ties to crisis pregnancy centers run deep; when he was governor of Indiana, Mike Pence infamously awarded a $3.5 million government contract to a network of centers operating within the state. So it is perhaps no surprise that the Trump administration’s fingerprints are all over NIFLA v. Becerra.”