ONE DAY MORE | When They Go Low, Courtesy Takes Us High | At 1 First, The Show Must Go On
November 7, 2016
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DESTINY
|Tomorrow, at long last, comes the 2016 election. And like most things this campaign season, it seems we’re in for a doozy.
A TURNING POINT
|What tomorrow surely means, no matter the outcome, is a new era for the Supreme Court. Noah Feldman for Bloomberg writes, “The upshot is that the future direction of the court could turn on this election to a greater degree than at any time since 1988. The next phase will be extremely interesting to court watchers — which increasingly means everybody.” ***INSERT shameless plug for reading SCOTUSDaily and keeping up with what’s driving the day at the Supreme Court. It’s important, people!
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|“In the next Congress, regardless of who wins on Tuesday, the very survival of the court as an independent body will be at stake.” The Editorial Board of The New York Times addresses the “coup against the Supreme Court” which reaches its culmination at polls tomorrow. Sixteen years after the presidential election was decided by our highest court, SCOTUS “sits crippled, unable to resolve the most pressing legal questions facing the country.” NYT: “Two events — the sudden death of JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA in February and the unprecedented refusal of Senate Republicans to even consider PRESIDENT OBAMA’S pick to fill the vacant seat — have converged to throw the court’s future as a functioning institution into doubt. This scenario would have seemed unimaginable a year ago. But Tuesday’s vote — for president and for control of the Senate — will determine whether the court remains short-handed for months or, as Republicans are now threatening if they hold the Senate, for years.”
WHEN THEY GO LOW
|Cristian Farias with The Huffington Post reports that days before the election, there was one place in Washington that rose above politics. “It happened, as the Constitution would have it, at the Supreme Court of the United States.” Friday, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS gaveled in a special session at the high court to memorialize in its public record the death of JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA. As Friday, it had been 30 years since the late jurist announced his first-ever opinion for the court. Farias: “With days before the election, Roberts didn’t call the session to send a message about the problems of having an eight-member court and an empty seat. MERRICK GARLAND, PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S choice to fill it, was even in attendance and sat directly in front of the justices, perhaps wondering if he’ll every get to call them colleagues. Instead, the Supreme Court was hewing close to its traditions, convening to accept a resolution honoring Scalia passed by the members of the Supreme Court bar.”
THINKIN BOUT YOU
|Courtesy at our high court provides evidence of a Supreme Court working together and making lemonade out of their short-handedness. AP’s Mark Sherman reports, “An Alabama death row inmate may be alive today because a transgender Virginia high school student was denied the use of the bathroom of his choice this year. The two seemingly unrelated cases have one thing in common: In each, a Supreme Court justice switched sides to provide a needed fifth vote to preserve the status quo.”
BACK TO THE BAN
|The Supreme Court on Friday reversed a one-day-old appeals court ruling and allowed Arizona to enforce its Republican-backed law banning the collection of early-voting ballots by political campaigners. It’s a practice known as “ballot harvesting” in which absentee ballots are collected and submitted to election officials by individuals or groups other than the people who actually completed the ballots.
WELL, NOW WHAT?
|David Savage with the Los Angeles Times considers what the Friday SCOTUS decision means for voting in Arizona. He reports, “It is not clear what will happen now. County election officials had said they did not plan to vigorously enforce the new law. However, the Republican Party said it was training volunteers to watch and report people who were seen dropping off ballots.”
NOTHING NEW
|Arizona isn’t the only state looking at a last-minute change in election law. Chris Geidner with Buzzfeed reports Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio were also handed federal court rulings Friday affecting their election laws.
KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED
|The Justice Department will be monitoring polling sites in 28 states Tuesday, which is five more states than it monitored in 2012. More than 500 DOJ personnel will be deployed, compared to the 780 dispatched during the 2012 general.
HOW TO PICK OUR OWN JUDGES
|“With no consensus on judicial selection, systems vary by state and sometimes even by county within the same state. Most states have ended up mixing aspects of several different systems that have fallen in and out of favor every couple decades.” The Associated Press reports on the lack of a uniformity in states picking their judges.
IMMA IMMA COOL GIRL
|She’s on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of 998 anti-government groups in the United States and she’s proud of it! Meet KrisAnne Hall who spends more than 260 days a year traveling the country and preaching against federal overreach of the Constitution. Kevin Sullivan with The Washington Post reports.
TODAY AT SCOTUS
|And though most of us are eagerly anticipating what tomorrow will bring, it’s important to keep in mind that over at 1 First Street the show must go on. Today, justices considered whether Lafe Solomon was allowed to serve as acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board while he was at the same time nominated to fill that role permanently. The outcome of the case could affect the next administration if the new president and Senate remain at odds over agency nominations. Also from the court this morning: No new cases from its November 4 conference.
ELECTION 2016
With Vote Looming, What Happens with the Supreme Court Vacancy?
Reuters“Several intriguing scenarios could unfold after Tuesday’s U.S. election to break the deadlock over filling a Supreme Court vacancy that has provoked a bitter nine-month standoff between President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans.”
Dems losing voting challenges but winning on optics
POLITICO“Democrats have little concrete to show for a week of legal battles charging Donald Trump and his allies with a sweeping voter intimidation campaign, but the effort may pay off politically for Hillary Clinton by energizing her backers to get to the polls to stop a real or imagined GOP onslaught.”
16 moments that defined the battle for the Senate
POLITICONumber two on this list is the moment in which Senator Mitch McConnell took a gamble and announced Republicans would not allow President Obama to fill the Supreme Court vacancy — an announcement he made mere hours after Justice Scalia’s death.
Final Reckoning Approaches for Obama's High Court Nominee
Reuters“Several intriguing scenarios could unfold after Tuesday’s U.S. election to break the deadlock over filling a Supreme Court vacancy that has provoked a bitter nine-month standoff between President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans.”
OTHER NEWS
Janet Reno, First Female U.S. Attorney General, Dies At 78
NPR“Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as attorney general of the United States, died early Monday from complications of Parkinson’s disease.”
Fate of Obama legacy initiatives in hands of courts, successor
Reuters“When President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20 after eight years, several of his major initiatives will still hang in the legal balance, meaning the U.S. courts and his successor will play a major role in shaping his legacy.”
History proves that eight is enough for the Supreme Court
The Hill“Conventional wisdom scoffs at the suggestion on the grounds that an even number [of justices] would lead to deadlocked votes. But our Constitution’s founders did not fear this, and the experience of the last nine months suggests that the risk is less real than imagined.”