GORSUCH OUT OF CERT POOL, O’CONNOR HONORED FOR CIVICS WORK & DEATH PENALTY UP IN AIR IN ALABAMA AND OKLAHOMA
May 3, 2017
I FEEL THEIR SMILES ON ME
|CNN’s Ariane de Vogue reports JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH “appears undaunted by the tsunami of work facing his chambers as he settles into his first few weeks on the bench.” She notes that the new justice has chosen not to join the “cert pool,” unafraid of a heavy workload for himself and his clerks.
THE FIRST AND FINEST
|The first female justice of the United States Supreme Court has long said that her most important work began when she stepped down from the bench. JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR was recently ranked as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people for her post-SCOTUS work in the field of civics education. O’Connor founded iCivics, a series of free online games that teach students about government from the point of view of the president, a Supreme Court justice and even a local county government leader. “’Sandra wanted to make civic education relevant to young people, and she knew that in order to engage them, she had to make it fun,’ Supreme Court JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, an iCivics board member, wrote in her Time essay about O’Connor. ‘Once again, Sandra became a pioneer.’” Kate Stringer with The 74 reports.
BIRDS IN THE TRAP
|“A U.S. Supreme Court decision from March over Texas’ death penalty standards — specifically, how the state determines who is intellectually disabled — could have a ripple effect into another state with one of the country’s largest death-row populations.” That’s Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner covering Monday’s SCOTUS decision to order Alabama courts to reconsider whether the state’s process for determining if a person is intellectually disabled, and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, is constitutional in the wake of that March ruling.
THE ENDS
|For decades, the state of Oklahoma has had one of the busiest death chambers in the country, executing more people per capita than any other state. However, the state’s death machine may be meeting its end. The Associated Press reports, “While Oklahoma voters staunchly support the ultimate punishment — more than two-thirds supported a pro-death penalty question on the ballot in November — it’s not clear if executions will resume again in Oklahoma any time soon.”