JPS WANTS RID OF SECOND AMENDMENT | Trump’s Judicial Litmus Test | Pop Takes Spurs To SCOTUS
March 27, 2018
TOP-ED
|The enormous movement built by youth activists to end gun violence and demand common sense gun reform caught the attention of one very important person: retired Supreme Court justice JOHN PAUL STEVENS. He writes in The New York Times that the weekend’s demonstrations “reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings and school children and others in our society.” His proposed solution? Repealing the Second Amendment. He argues that a constitutional amendment that gets rid of the Second Amendment would “eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States — unlike every other market in the world.” JPS adds, “It would make our schoolchildren safer than they have been since 2008 and honor the memories of the many, indeed far too many, victims of recent gun violence.”
A SCOTUS REMEMBRANCE
|The woman who was once the little girl at the center of the Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, died Sunday at the age of 75. LINDA BROWN was only nine when her dad tried to enroll her at Sumner Elementary School which was all-white. The school denied her enrollment and what followed led to one of the most important cases in American history.
THE TRUMP TEST
|Jeremy Peters writes in The New York Times that PRESIDENT TRUMP has a new litmus test for judicial nominees: reining in “the administrative state.” Peters reports, “With surprising frankness, the White House has laid out a plan to fill the courts with judges devoted to a legal doctrine that challenges the broad power federal agencies have to interpret laws and enforce regulations, often without being subject to judicial oversight. Those not on board with this agenda, the White House has said, are unlikely to be nominated by President Trump.”
JUSTICES PLAY POLITICS
|In POLITICO Magazine, Richard Hasen previews tomorrow’s big partisan gerrymandering case and notes that while the case may decide whether Maryland violated the First Amendment rights of Republican voters when it redrew the state’s congressional districts, it may also help determine the high court’s role in our political process.
ANOTHA ONE
|When Maryland’s then-GOVERNOR MARTIN O’MALLEY redrew the state’s congressional map in 2011, he came up with a plan that gave his fellow Democrats the best chance of winning as many seats as possible. By now, we know this to be an all-too-familiar story about politicians of both parties. Sam Levine with HuffPost reports on tomorrow’s gerrymandering case, Benisek v. Lamone, which has the chance to “reshape American politics by forcing states to draw districts that are more competitive.”
SECRETS DON'T MAKE FRIENDS, RUMORS DO
|Not so surprisingly, Senate Republicans are responsible for fueling rumors of JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY’S retirement. They hope the Supreme Court’s swing vote will step down before the November midterm elections so that Republicans will have something to rally their base around. Andrew Bolton with The Hill has the story.
IF I COULD WRITE YOU A LETTER
|“If the young MERRICK GARLAND had not edited a law review article written by the late U.S. Supreme Court JUSTICE WILLIAM BRENNAN JR. in 1977, he might not have clerked for Brennan and might have pursued a different path than the one that led him to be an appellate judge and Supreme Court nominee.” Tony Mauro with The National Law Journal reports on how Judge Garland got the gig of clerking for a Supreme Court justice and the correspondence between him and Brennan that were only recently made available to the public.
POP FOR PRESIDENT
|Some NBA teams visit the White House, some visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture. But the San Antonio Spurs, under the leadership of GREGG POPOVICH of course, decided to go a different way. Pop took his team to the Supreme Court yesterday ahead of today’s game against the Wizards. For the SCOTUS visit alone, we’re pulling for the Spurs this round.
SCOTUS VIEWS
If Republicans Rigged Voting Maps, Why Are Democrats Winning So Much?
USA Today“The silver lining for the presumptive bloodbath coming this November is that it renders the Democrats’ bleating about ‘unfair’ districts to be moot. Needless to say, the intensity of the left’s interest in ‘fair’ maps is directly tied to how many seats they actually hold. Their appeals to justice and probity in cartography only became an issue of concern when voters started electing more Republicans. Thus, after November, Democrats either get to have Congress or the gerrymandering issue. They can’t have both.”
A Maryland Case Could Be The Key To A Supreme Court Ruling Against Gerrymandering. It Still Wouldn't Be Enough.
The Baltimore Sun“However far the Supreme Court might go in its ruling, though, it is becoming increasingly clear that the judiciary alone can’t fully solve the problem. Courts can invalidate districts after the fact and can even draw new boundaries (as Pennsylvania’s state supreme court has done in advance of the fall midterm elections), but they can’t prescribe a fair process to create the maps in the first place.”