U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

BREAKING — The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote as soon as next week to issue subpoenas as part of its Supreme Court ethics investigation, Chair Durbin announces.

Subpoena targets:
—Harlan Crow
—Leonard Leo
—Robin Arkley II

Significant escalation of Dem-led probe. More TK.

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) October 30, 2023

BREAKING — The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote as soon as next week to issue subpoenas as part of its Supreme Court ethics investigation, Chair Durbin announces.

Subpoena targets:
—Harlan Crow
—Leonard Leo
—Robin Arkley II

Significant escalation of Dem-led probe. More TK.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/07/supreme-court-guns-domestic-violence-rahimi/

The details of that Rahimi dude are *nuts*. Drug dealer got into a fight with his girlfriend in a parking lot. He knocked her to the ground, dragged her to the car, then fired a gun at a bystander. The girlfriend got away, but he threatened to shoot her if she called the police. Texas (Texas!) determined he was an ongoing threat and suspended his gun license. And yet ... he continued to fire his gun in public! And when the police went to his house to arrest him, they found plenty of guns, ammunition, and, reportedly, *a copy of the protective order.* Just brazen.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/13/politics/supreme-court-announcement/index.html

Good News : There's a new Supreme Court Code of Ethics

Bad News: “But the key is what’s missing: how are these rules going to be enforced, and by whom? Even the most rigorous ethical and financial reporting requirements won’t mean very much if there’s no one monitoring the justices’ compliance and no push back when those rules are violated,” Vladeck added. “And on that subject, today’s release says only that it will be up to the justices themselves. It’s hard to imagine that such a milquetoast response will satisfy most of the court’s critics.”

https://x.com/jaywillis/status/1724152519805546906?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

Ethics Code allows appearances at Federalist Society events this tweet and responses to it suggest

From the very beginning, the Federalist Society functioned as an unofficial annex to the court, but lately the court has become more of a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federalist Society.

The conservative majority found this week that a prisoner in solitary confinement for around 3 years was not subject to the eighth amendment proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. The 3 liberal justices dissented, and while it won't change the decision, amazingly conservative columnist George Will agreed with Justice Jackson's dissent

justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from this denial, joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Jackson, the first justice to have seen the criminal justice system from the perspective of a practicing public defender, notes that for nearly three years Johnson:

“… spent nearly every hour of his existence in a windowless, perpetually lit cell about the size of a parking space. His cell was poorly ventilated, resulting in unbearable heat and noxious odors. The space was … often caked with human waste. And because Pontiac officials would not provide cleaning supplies to Johnson unless he purchased them from the commissary, he was frequently forced to clean that filth with his bare hands. Johnson was allowed out of his cell to shower only once per week, for 10 brief minutes.”

prisons should not make prisoners worse. When Johnson’s mental illness made him difficult to manage, Pontiac’s punishments drove him deeper into insanity, and Pontiac continued punishing him for his resulting behaviors....The authors of the Eighth Amendment did not include a clause saying cruelty is unacceptable “unless the prisoner is unusually difficult or especially evil.” Just as the First Amendment protects even vile speech for the protection and betterment of society, the Eighth Amendment proscribes barbaric punishments for society’s sake — to insulate it from its inhumane impulses, to which humanity is prey.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/17/supreme-court-mistake-solitary-confinement/

tl,dr:

(1) The chances of the Democrats holding the Senate next November are between slim and none. Currently, the seven seats most likely to flip are all held by Democrats. You have to get to Ted Cruz in Texas before you get to a somewhat vulnerable Republican. Basically the Dems are going to be drawing to an inside straight here.

(2) I can’t exactly remember who is running for president for each party but I suspect it also adds to the uncertainty here.

(3) Sotomayor turns 70 next year. She has Type I diabetes. Kagan turns 64. They will have served on the SCOTUS for 15 and 14 years respectively.

(4) If you think that a Republican-controlled Senate will allow the confirmation of any SCOTUS nomination from Joe Biden then perhaps I could also interest you in some LoomCoin. If you think Donald Trump isn’t going to nominate an outright theocratic bomb throwing authoritarian, and/or that any GOP-controlled Senate won’t necessarily confirm whoever he nominates, I’d like to introduce you to Sam Bankman-Fried to help you make all your personal investing decisions.

SCOTUS is beyond a lost cause for the rest of our natural lifetimes

That happens to be your particular abnormality.

they need to say a justice is retiring in February pending a new nomination, vote that person in, then rescind the resignation. pack the courts by having justices change their mind

is there any reason hope the Democrats will ever do anything that radical? even the dual retirements scenario seems totally unlikely to me

No

pack the courts by having justices change their mind

sorry, but the only path to packing the court that would be legal first requires an act of Congress to officially allow more than nine justices on the court. only then could more seats be filled. simply bypassing Congress and pretending that suddenly there are ten or eleven justices because some resignations were rescinded would be no more legal than Trump's attempted coup d'etat was.

OK, cool.

I know there’s a containment thread for this but … there’s a not zero chance that Trump, TRUMP, picks over half the court’s nine seats

Nixon nominated Burger, Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist. So! All the more reason to get the vote out.

Sandra Day O'Connor dead.

gutted

Jeez, I hope they catch the guy.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/12/oconnor-2

That is a pretty damning piece; fascinating

It would be a nice Murder, She Wrote episode to have a former Vice President murder a former Supreme Court Justice who kept him from becoming President. He waited 23 years so no one would suspect.

It's a damning piece in that it's mostly vitriol.

But he's kind of OTM that O'Connor didn't receive much vitriol while serving the Court mostly because she was a woman and because of Casey/Roe issues.

Vitriol can be true as it is in this case.

Well looks like Jack Smith is just throwing it out there:

Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution.

The request was unusual in two ways: Mr. Smith asked the justices to rule before an appeals court acted, and he urged them to move with exceptional speed.

looks to me like Smith is anticipating the Trump defense that's most likely to be accepted by a deferential Supreme court. if they rule in Trump's favor then Trump wriggles out again, plus the case against his co-conspirators is considerably weakened. maybe better to know now than wait to see.

hard to see this going Trump's way even with the current court, but you never know

The article I read said this is mostly about scheduling. Smith is trying to get the court to rule quickly to keep the May 2024 trial date. It is unlikely the trial could go forward by May 2024 if Smith had to wait for this to work it's way to the Court of Appeals (the normal channel) before going to the Supreme Court.

Bush v Gore in 2000 suggests to me this ruling against Trump isn't a slam dunk to be upheld by the SCOTUS

Trial date is March, not May.

Even more so then. If SC doesn't expedite their ruling, that isn't happening.

I don’t know the legal landscape on this issue really, but I sure as hell hope SCOTUS doesn’t say former presidents can’t be charged for anything they do in office. Hopefully even they might think that’s a bad idea!

If they DO rule that way, then Biden oughta go hog wild. Shoot a senator or two. Deport Melania. Tie up Harlan Crow and piss on his shoes.

He'd need to clear it with the Senate Dem caucus first. In case he got impeached they'd need to stonewall like the Republicans did for Trump.

I don’t know the legal landscape on this issue really, but I sure as hell hope SCOTUS doesn’t say former presidents can’t be charged for anything they do in office. Hopefully even they might think that’s a bad idea!

If they DO rule that way, then Biden oughta go hog wild. Shoot a senator or two. Deport Melania. Tie up Harlan Crow and piss on his shoes.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, December 11, 2023

absolutely

If you shoot the right Senators they can’t impeach

Former presidents though. Watch your back, Brandon!

By many accounts this NYTimes piece on the behind the scenes Dobbs decision is a doozy:

https://archive.ph/HCnqc

Gorsuch signed off on the 98 page Dobbs decision ten minutes after getting it , and suggested no revisions!

Coney Barrett earlier argued they shouldn’t even take the case, then flip flopped and agreed to taking it and hearing it and signing off.

On Feb. 10 last year, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. showed his eight colleagues how he intended to uproot the constitutional right to abortion.

At 11:16 a.m., his clerk circulated a 98-page draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. After a justice shares an opinion inside the court, other members scrutinize it. Those in the majority can request revisions, sometimes as the price of their votes, sweating sentences or even words.

But this time, despite the document’s length, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote back just 10 minutes later to say that he would sign on to the opinion and had no changes, according to two people who reviewed the messages. The next morning, Justice Clarence Thomas added his name, then Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and days later, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. None requested a single alteration. The responses looked like a display of conservative force and discipline

Indeed!

Another oof

https://bsky.app/profile/propublica.bsky.social/post/3kgsuu6an422i

New: Clarence Thomas’ Private Complaints About Money Sparked Fears He Would Resign

"how much can we pay him to stay?!"

Labor champion

Will Thomas recuse from voting on whether to take the special counsel & trump immunity petition appeal ?

lol seriously

Such a shock that this guy has turned out to be a shit judge.

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus