GREG STOHR ON THE HOT BENCH | Elections Push Conservatives To Focus On Judiciary | Chief Justice Roberts, A Dark Horse Swing Vote
November 9, 2017
FEELING HOT HOT HOT
|Today marks the return of The Hot Bench — our interview series that invites Supreme Court journalists, commentators and watchers to discuss their experience covering the high court and some lessons learned that they might impart to all of us SCOTUS junkies. This week, Bloomberg’s Supreme Court reporter, GREG STOHR, spoke with SCOTUSDaily about his time writing about the justices. He reveals the most shocking—and therefore most memorable—moment he’s had on the job, as well as some of the things he wished more Americans understood about the court. Catch our full interview and stay tuned for more in upcoming weeks!
GETTING THEIR DUCKS IN A ROW
|Joan Biskupic with CNN reports Tuesday’s elections that handed victory after victory to Democrats “could give conservative forces more urgency in an area PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is already moving on aggressively: reshaping the federal courts.”
ONE YEAR LATER
|It’s been a year since we elected DONALD J. TRUMP to be our 45th president. Folks are marking the anniversary by taking a look at how far—or maybe not so far—we’ve come in the time since. In The Washington Post, Daniel Drezner assesses how well the constitutional democracy is holding up. His conclusion? So far so good. But he notes, “The good news is that the system is working under Trump. The bad news is that parts of it are showing signs of stress. And we have at least three more years to go.”
TOP-ED
|Responding to the recent case in which “the Trump administration pulled out all the stops to keep a pregnant 17-year-old” from getting an abortion, Linda Greenhouse writes in The New York Times on what she sees as the worrisome future of abortion rights.
PICKING PRECEDENT OVER CAKE – A SCOTUS CHANGE OF HEART
|For Slate, David Gans theorizes that if CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS were to follow his own precedents, he is very likely to actually vote in favor of protecting gay couples like the one in the upcoming cake case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Gans: “Masterpiece has urged the Supreme Court to announce a sweeping ruling that would gut public accommodations laws and subject same-sex couples—and others—to all manner of discrimination. At each turn, though, its arguments run headlong into binding First Amendment precedents authored by the chief justice. If Roberts follows these past rulings, he will vote to uphold public accommodations laws that help guarantee equal dignity for all persons, no matter whom they love.“
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1953, the Supreme Court upheld a prior (and apparently controversial) decision that allowed major league baseball to operate outside of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Scott Bomboy with Constitution Daily reports on the one-paragraph opinion and the effects it had not only on baseball, but on how most people understand antitrust exemptions today