WHY 8 AIN’T SO GREAT & WHY IT’S DRIVING THE DAY

October 4, 2016

The justices will hear their first insider-trading case since 1997 which will test whether someone can be sent to prison for making trades when the insider who provided the tip wasn’t looking to make any money. Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr and Patricia Hurtado report.

When the real story driving the day is that the Supreme Court doesn’t seem so supreme with only eight members on the job for the start of the new term.

“The U.S. Supreme Court opened its new term on Monday in low-key fashion, still down a justice for the foreseeable future because of the Republican-led Senate’s refusal to act on PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S nominee to replace late JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA.”

“Still down a justice, Supreme Court term is off to a restrained start…”

“The Supreme Court’s new term begins Monday with the focus not on the court’s docket but on the court itself and a future that will be defined by a presidential election. For the first time in decades, there will only be eight justices, not nine, to begin the new term. Also absent are the kind of big-ticket cases that in recent years have catapulted the Supreme Court to the fore of American civic life.”

For The Hill, Executive Director of Fix the Court, GABE ROTH, looks abroad for strategies to reform the United States Supreme Court. “Just as these and other nations learned from the experience of the United States in establishing their constitutional and judicial systems, so, too, should our country take a page from those that have successfully ensured their top legal officials do not become a superannuated oligarchy.”

For CNN, Joan Biskupic reports the Supreme court, like the rest of the country, struggles with race. And this term, the justices are diving head first into a set of “racially charged cases in the explosive context of the criminal justice system.”

ABC’s Audrey Taylor delivers a list of six cases to watch in OT16. One of them being Salman v. United States, the insider trading case that comes before justices Wednesday.