IS SCOTUS GOING EASY ON OVERSEAS CORPS? | #MeToo At Judiciary Doomed To Fail | RBG Having Fun With Fame
May 9, 2018
SLOW RIDE, TAKE IT EASY
|Is the Supreme Court going too easy on overseas corporations? Todd N. Tucker addresses this question in POLITICO in response to the Supreme Court decision last month to “shut the doors on a whole suite of international human rights claims.” The justices ruled in Jesner v. Arab Bank that victims of corporate malfeasance overseas may not use U.S. courts to hold businesses accountable. Tucker says, “While not a surprise, the decision brings to an end a modern crusade by human-rights campaigners to use the 1789 Alien Tort Statute as a tool to hold corporations to account for overseas violations.”
HONEY I SHRUNK THE UNIONS
|Eric Morath writes in The Wall Street Journal about a new study that reveals just how devastating the SCOTUS ruling in Janus could be to unions. The study expects the outcome of the case could shrink public-sector labor unions in 23 states, with an eventual loss of 726,000 union members nationwide.
DOOMED TO FAIL
|Bad news for those optimistic about the #MeToo movement and its impact on the judiciary — Stacy Cammarano says in The Washington Post that reform efforts to protect folks from sexual harassment are doomed to fail. She asserts, “As the #MeToo movement progresses, we must consider unique challenges within each industry. When it comes to the judiciary, only Congress can create the remedies necessary to protect employees from sexual harassment. It’s time to make the judiciary subject to the same laws it enforces for everyone else.”
ANOTHER TURNING POINT, A FORK STUCK IN THE ROAD
|“Good Riddance to ‘Blue Slips.'” That’s the headline of a new piece from David Lat in The New York Times where he notes that the end of blue slips is near — but maybe that isn’t so bad. He writes, “It certainly reflects a decline in senatorial courtesy. It’s bad news for individual senators, who now have less power to scuttle nominations. But the effect that scrapping blue slips will have upon the federal judiciary, and therefore the nation, is actually positive.”
HAVING FUN WITH FAME
|The New York Times, Melena Ryzik covers the appearance of JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG at a screening of the new documentary about her life, RBG. “Justice Ginsburg is an unlikely celebrity but then again, we live in an age full of those. What makes her ascendance to pop culture icon — the Notorious RBG, y’all — truly surprising is that, at 85, she is having fun with her unexpected fame, and making careful and inspired use of it for her own savvy ends.” In the story, legal powerhouse THEODORE OLSON is quoted as saying of the justice, “She knows the fact that she’s doing this, and embracing it, means so much to young women — because she’s teaching, every time she gives a speech or talks to people.” Preach.