U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

Kinda hope she doesn't

This dude making the independent state legislature keeps redefining "procedural" vs "substantive" and it's got the three lib justices in a lather. Sotomayor has been A+.

He's also a jerk. He refers to "my friends on the other side" with barely suppressed contempt like a small town defense attorney.

I'm not listening because Armond's take on S&S was quite enough for me this morning

The arguments in Moore v. Harper did not go as terribly as I had feared. Clearly, there are three votes for a maximalist version of the "independent state legislature" theory (Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch) and one vote for SOME version of it (Kavanaugh). Barrett sounded skeptical.

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) December 7, 2022

Yeah, Barrett and Kav sounded at best on the fence. It didn't help that Robertson was just awful.

these cases that threaten to completely upend a major part of the legal framework seem to be a red line that Robert and Barrett don't want to touch, hopefully that's the case here

Katya, wow, was fantastic. I'd never heard him in oral argument; I know him from his boring cable show appearances. He had the facts on hand, was crisp, and wasted no time. Several times he exasperated Gorsuch and Alito, who were reduced to impatient "Fine, fine"s.

https://www.salon.com/2022/12/13/law-professors-raise-ethics-concerns-as-kavanaugh-parties-with-at-worst-possible-time/

legal scholars raised concerns about the judicial code of ethics after a report from Politico that revealed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently attended a private holiday party hosted by Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) chairman Matt Schlapp.

Also in attendance at the party on Friday night was Stephen Miller, a top adviser to former president Donald Trump and head of the America First Legal Foundation, which has cases pending in court.

Seb Gorka, Erik Prince, & many more right-wing crazies were there in Alexandria, VA

Old Town Alexandria is also home to Flynn. It attracts the crazies who want to cosplay as founding fathers.

This speech on "originalism" by judge Robert L Wilkins is an absolute scorcher

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/representation-judiciary-federal-bench-judge-wilkins.html

That is very good. Thanks.

wow, thanks

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/us/politics/supreme-court-historical-society-donors-justices.html

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the historical society’s most significant source of identifiable funds — more than 34 percent — is the lawyers and law firms that practice before the Supreme Court, according to the Times analysis

Judge Wilkins otfm.

i remember my first time covering a case in a federal courthouse (Elon Musk was there vs. the SEC lol). they take your electronics. like i had to pick up my iPhone at coat check when my day ended.

i can’t imagine putting money into creating an entire product & not knowing this pic.twitter.com/ll6MAUboPh

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) January 9, 2023

bruh you spent 6 years on this and didn't know a fundamental rule

Perhaps we could get them to agree with a charitable donation. Or accessibility rules.

Still a work in progress. Wish us luck!

— Joshua Browder (@jbrowder1) January 9, 2023

It's gotta be a joke.

the company has other features that are already functional like using AI to cancel subscriptions/try to fight parking tickets in writing/etc, stuff that already has a market, I guess the AI lawyer is the next grift thing they're gong to offer.

it's either a deliberately stupid comment in order to get publicity, or an accidentally stupid comment that has the same result.

i actually used them a couple of months ago when i was desperate to cancel my citizens bank checking account and could not figure out how to do it. and.. i think it worked? not sure since i made a bazillion calls and wrote a bazillion letters myself as well.

the irony? their website contains no way to close your DoNotPay account. you have to email a support email address so they stop billing you....

Roberts' Sinister Six actually did worse today:

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with a Texas death row inmate who is trying to overturn his conviction based on faulty DNA evidence. In a rare reversal, the inmate received the support of the district attorney involved in the case.

In an unsigned order, the justices agreed to take up the case, but in doing so wiped away the lower court’s decision and sent the case back to that court “for further consideration in light of the confession of error by Texas in its brief filed” in September.

“The most alarming thing about the court’s decision to send the case back for a new trial is that it was even necessary in the first place,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

“The state confessed error in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, only to have that court affirm the conviction and death sentence anyway. Thus, while today’s decision is clearly the correct one, it unfortunately comes with no public reprobation of the lower court for forcing the Supreme Court to step in.”

$1 million to get disbarred and made unemployable.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court says it has been unable to identify "by a preponderance of the evidence" who leaked the Dobbs opinion last year.

A statement from the court, along with a report on the leak investigation, is posted here: https://t.co/cVMLKkbCb9

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) January 19, 2023

it is a mystery

To say it aloud would shatter the Court in a thousand pieces. Good.

it was darryl, the seemingly "can do no wrong" intern who was always working late nites in the supreme court

"What's that bulge under your shirt, Darryl?"

"I'm--uh--pregant?"

"Great! A funny thing about that.."

nant

The second sentence of that official statement ("The leak was no mere misguided attempt at protest") provides an interesting example of suggestive ambiguity. It seems to say something positive while actually stating its negation. How clever of them!

ah. they didn't investigate the justices. just everyone else. makes sense.

geeeee, who could have done it?!

https://i.imgur.com/BmVHOjq.png

that Tim Robinson jpg getting a lot of work these days

The Supreme Court did not disclose its longstanding financial ties with former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff even as it touted him as an expert who independently validated its investigation into who leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

The court’s inquiry, released last week with Chertoff’s endorsement, failed to identify who was responsible for the unprecedented leak.....the court in recent years has privately contracted with The Chertoff Group for security assessments, some broadly covering justices’ safety and some specifically related to Covid-19 protocols at the court itself...he estimated payments to Chertoff’s risk assessment firm, for consultations that extended over several months and involved a review of the justices’ homes, reached at least $1 million. The exact amount of money paid could not be determined. Supreme Court contracts are not covered by federal public disclosure rules and elude tracking on public databases....The court’s decision to keep secret the prior arrangements with Chertoff, whose professional path has intersected over the years with Chief Justice John Roberts and other court conservatives, as it used him for a seal of approval, adds to controversy over the leak investigation itself.

“It’s at least a valid question why they went to someone who had a relationship with the court. Can we be sure he is objective? That’s part of the reason for disclosures,” Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, told CNN....A year ahead of Roberts at Harvard Law School, Chertoff and Roberts served in successive years as law clerks on the New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals and then at the Supreme Court...

...Last week’s report detailed the many law clerks and permanent employees who had been interviewed, and required to sign affidavits, to try to determine responsibility for the leak. But court officials initially said nothing about whether the justices were interviewed. On January 20, Curley revealed that she had spoken to each of the nine justices but had not asked them to sign affidavits.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/27/politics/supreme-court-chertoff-leak-investigation/index.html

ffs

So Roberts isn’t just throwing money to his school buddy Chertoff, but he is also seemingly enabling his wife to get work too

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/31/jane-roberts-legal-recruiting-work-agencies-cases-supreme-court-00080515

Hmm

NEWS: A federal judge Monday said the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision may *not* have ended the constitutional right to an abortion.

She wants briefing on whether the 13th amendment — or any other — might confer such a right.

w/ @joshgerstein https://t.co/aQcAij29tk

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 6, 2023

That could be important.

I think we'd need a different set of justices for this argument to survive a SCOTUS case.

I think it's clear that the three liberals plus Gorsuch would hold that recording the police is constitutionally protected, but I'm not sure about that fifth vote. It's certainly harder post-RBG. The originalist analysis is kinda hard when smart phones are involved!

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) February 7, 2023

If somehow this leads to SCOTUS outlawing smart phones (and social media), then sign me up for originalism.

Fun fact: at the Boston Massacre, everyone had to hold still for an hour so an artist could sketch it.

honestly what the fuck do smart phones have to do with anything? You have a protected right to write down, draw, speak about, publish articles about, etc. whatever you saw police do, why would video be any different?

President Alito does not approve.

Police are testing out new abuses. It's not cool to film them with your phone before they've had the freedom to work them out.

How would they even know I am filming them and not watching a funny Tik Tok at the same time they are brutalizing someone?

I can see it now. The SCOTUS decision will find that filming police on duty creates a serious jeopardy to public safety by potentially distracting police as they attempt to deal with criminal activity, but that the 1st amendment must be respected; their solution is that police departments must provide 'reasonable accommodations' for those who seek to film police on duty. It will cite the example of requiring parade permits in order to take advantage of the constitutionally protected right of assembly as the sort of 'reasonable accommodation' that passes the test of constitutionality.

Republicans got rid of blue slips process for circuit court nominees, but Dem Senator Durbin wants to still largely retain them for District Court nominees even though that will allow Republicans to block and delay nominations

Durbin responding to NYT editorial board urging him to end blue slips:

“I want to continue blue slips with one caveat: I won’t honor a blue slip that I believe discriminates because of race, gender, or sexual discrimination. So we’ll see how this develops.”

The Supreme Court has failed to reach consensus on an ethics code of conduct specific to the nine justices despite internal discussion dating back at least four years, according to people familiar with the matter.

It remains an active topic at the court, these people said, and the court’s legal counsel Ethan Torrey prepared a working document of issues for them to consider. There is no timeline for the justices to act, however.

...Although the justices say they voluntarily comply with the same ethical guidelines that apply to other federal judges, the lack of an ethics code has become a prominent complaint on Capitol Hill, where in 2019 Justice Elena Kagan told a congressional committee that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was “seriously” studying the issue. But a discussion among the justices failed to produce agreement, people familiar with the matter said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/09/supreme-court-ethics-code/

Astounding!

4 more years of serious research is needed

ha yeah was tryna figure out which was astounding, that there is no formal code, or that they again failed to decide upon one which to implement. but i know soto knows the former. mystery solved *orders negroni*