CHIEF JUSTICE TO OVERSEE PUERTO RICO BANKRUPTCY | Rumor Mill Still Focused On Kennedy | The Tax SCOTUS Should Squash
May 4, 2017
HERE'S LOOKIN AT YOU
|They don’t call him the “Chief” for nothing. USA Today’s Natham Bomey reports the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has a big decision to make. “A little-noticed provision in a bill signed into law in 2016 places the fate of Puerto Rico in the hands of the Supreme Court’s chief justice. After Puerto Rico filed for the equivalent of bankruptcy protection Wednesday, the immediate question was which judge would be appointed to oversee the case. Turns out that’s up to CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS.”
RUMOUR HAS IT
|The rumors of JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY’S retirement continue to grab headlines, but the justice is so far refusing to comment on the speculation. If Kennedy were to step down, conservative control of the bench would be cemented for decades. PRESIDENT TRUMP has said he would choose a new Supreme Court justice from the same list of candidates he unveiled during the campaign.
TOP-ED
|In The Washington Post, former Solicitor General TED OLSON addresses the Republican tax reform plan and suggests the proposal of a $1 trillion tax for “border adjustment” should be squashed. Why? “It would be unconstitutional,” he says, and it may be up to the Supreme Court to stop it. “If retail politics does not sink ‘border adjustment,’ the Supreme Court should. How pointless to pass an experimental and unfair tax only to have it struck down after all that political capital is spent getting it passed.”
WHAT'S LEFT
|Bloomberg’s Kimberly Robinson details what’s left for the Supreme Court this term, with two of its busiest months still to come. Robinson: “This term the justices have more than half of their cases pending, which is typical. The job of clearing out those cases will be made even more difficult by the fact that new JUSTICE NEIL M. GORSUCH will likely not participate in cases that were argued before he joined the high court in April. That means not only that some justices will have to write more opinions, but also that the court will have to continue to forge tough-won consensus to avoid deadlocked decisions. If they are unable to do so, the justices have another option: They can order that cases be reargued next term so that Gorsuch can provide the decisive vote.”
OTHER NEWS
Police Don't Need a Search Warrant to Use Your Cell Phone Records to Track Your Location. Will SCOTUS Do Something About It?
Reason“The Supreme Court now has the opportunity to provide some fresh answers. On May 11 the justices will meet in their next private conference to consider the latest batch of cases up for possible review. Among those petitions are five cases that effectively ask the Court to give the third-party doctrine a second look. A definitive ruling by the Court against the government in any one of those five cases could reshape the landscape of Fourth Amendment law.”
A Case the Justices Shouldn't Have Heard
The Wall Street Journal“Justice Neil Gorsuch’s first high-profile case at the Supreme Court, heard April 19, was Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer—but the case never should have made it this far. Political acrimony helped escalate it to the high court prematurely. It would be resolved already had it been handled in state court.”