CONGRESS ASKS SCOTUS FOR EXPEDITED AUDIO | Is A Hot Dog A Sandwich? | Pennsylvania Chief Justice Slams Fellow Republicans
March 23, 2018
DEAR JOHN
|Yesterday, transparency advocates and leading members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees penned letters to CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS asking for expedited audio release of the April 25 hearing on the president’s travel plan. Should the chief justice agree, this would be the first time the court granted expedited audio release since the Obergefell arguments in 2015.
MUCH-DESERVED KUDOS
|Executive Director of Fix the Court, GABE ROTH, released a statementpraising the congressional initiative. He noted, “I’m pleased that leading members of the committees of jurisdiction are looking to improve transparency at the high court. Granting same-day audio access, as the justices have done 26 times prior, would be an act consistent with other modernization steps CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS has implemented in recent years that increase openness, from permitting e-filing to releasing financial disclosures digitally.”
THE GREAT DEBATE
|ICYMI, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG worked out with STEPHEN COLBERT and basically kicked his butt. Marcia Coyle with The National Law Journal reports on one critical moment of their time together in which Colbert asked the justice a critical question of our time: Is a hot dog a sandwich? Hear what Justice Ginsburg had to say and be reminded of why she’s known as the Notorious RBG.
WHAT A MESS
|Meanwhile over in Pennsylvania, conflict over the state’s congressional maps continues. GOP legislators are calling for the impeachment of four Democratic state supreme court justices and the chief justice — a Republican — is having none of it. In a statement from Chief Justice Thomas Saylor he said, “Threats of impeachment directed against justices because of their decision in a particular case are an attack upon an independent judiciary, which is an essential component of our constitutional plan of government.”
OTHER NEWS
Kansas Appeals Planned Parenthood Case To US Supreme Court
The Associated Press“Kansas is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that prevents the state from cutting off Medicaid funds to a Planned Parenthood affiliate. Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer said Thursday that the state is seeking to reverse a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last month. Colyer is a strong abortion opponent.”
For Some Class-Action Lawyers, Charity Begins And Ends At Home
The Wall Street Journal“If an attorney raids a client’s settlement money, he’ll get disbarred and could go to prison for embezzlement. But if the same attorney raids settlement money from a class-action suit, charities may laud him and courts award him millions of dollars. My colleagues and I are asking the Supreme Court to put an end to the abuse of a trust-law doctrine known as cy pres, under which class-action lawyers have funneled millions of dollars of settlement money to select charities.”