HOW JUSTICE BLACKMUN GRADED THE NOTORIOUS RBG | The Latest In The Fight Over Abortion Access
October 28, 2019
C'S GET DEGREES
|Jess Bravin with The Wall Street Journal reports JUSTICE HARRY BLACKMUN would grade Supreme Court advocates as if they were his own law students. He would make note of their style, their hometown, even their ethnicities. And as Bravin points out, some of those who received grades from Blackmun later went on to join the Supreme Court. JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG was given a C-plus. JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA was described as being, “Plump. Dark.” Scalia got a B.
LAST MAN STANDING
|Today the fate of the only abortion clinic in the state of Missouri gets a hearing before the Administrative Hearing Commission. The fight between Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services comes down to whether the clinic’s license can get renewed — something the health department declined to do, citing safety concerns. If the courts side with the health department and the clinic loses its license and ability to serve patients, Missouri would be the first state in decades without a medical abortion clinic.
NOT GOIN' NOWHERE
|Caroline Kelly with CNN takes a look at new abortion restrictions conservative states passed earlier this year — which she says have gone nowhere. “Of the nine so-called gestational bans — which bar abortions past a certain point in pregnancy — passed this year, none have gone into effect after most of them have been blocked by judges. In particular, court actions have kept all of the so-called heartbeat bans — bills outlawing abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy — from coming into force.”
LOOK AT ME NOW
|Tucker Higgins with CNBC notes that while JANET NAPOLITANO used to set records for the number of people she deported from the U.S., she’s now taking on PRESIDENT TRUMP at the Supreme Court over immigration. Higgins writes, “The court fight is over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields about 700,000 young people who were brought to the country unlawfully from deportation and allows them to receive work permits. ‘The real question is who is being deported,’ Napolitano said in a recent interview in Manhattan, explaining her position as a tough-on-the-border advocate for immigrants. Napolitano was instrumental in establishing the DACA program, which she signed into action in 2012 as DHS secretary. Now, she is leading the legal challenge to the Trump administration’s efforts to end it.”
MEANWHILE IN CALIFORNIA
|While the state battles literal fires up and down the coast, California also has some legal fires to put out as well. Greg Stohr with Bloomberg reports on the Trump administration asking SCOTUS last week to toss out California’s immigrant-sanctuary law that restricts local police from helping federal officials round up and deport illegal immigrants.
SCOTUS VIEWS
The President’s Lawyers Are Making A Dangerous Argument For Presidential Immunity
The Atlantic“Consovoy was raising a valid concern about a ‘proliferation’ of partisan state prosecutions burdening a president. While his argument for total immunity from state process went too far, he was making an important argument for federal jurisdiction to review state subpoenas of a president, which should be sufficient to prevent abuses. But it was earlier in Consovoy’s answers—overlooked by the media and the judges themselves—that his arguments backed into a more practical and immediate danger.”
A Way Out For The Supreme Court On DACA
The New York Times“In two weeks, the Supreme Court will consider President Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, better known as DACA. Many expect a sharply divided decision in the spring, just as the presidential campaign picks up steam. But a different path would better serve both the court and the country. By resolving the case on narrow grounds, the justices could steer clear of the political fray and their own jurisprudential divisions. Such a ruling would leave DACA in place for now, but leave the policy’s ultimate fate to the political process — reaffirming the vital distinction between law and politics.”
A Constitutional Case For Gun Control
The Atlantic“For decades, gun-control advocates have left this narrative partially unanswered, offering depressing statistics but no compelling constitutional principle. They cannot afford to do so any longer. The March for Our Lives brief marks the beginning of a long-needed effort to offer a pro-gun-control constitutional narrative, one that calls attention to the constitutional rights and goods vindicated by gun regulation. These include a collective understanding of self-defense, as well as constitutional guarantees such as the right to public assembly and interests such as access to public education. The point is that the right to bear arms is not the only constitutional commitment implicated in the guns debate, and the court ought to consider those other commitments as worth balancing with the right to bear arms, not as inherently subordinate to it.”