U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

No, ILX.

well, that's true

"Doug Henwood" as usual reaching the Urban Outfitters crowd

Scott Lemieux ranges over SCOTUS history since the LBJ era for evidence that RBG and Breyer fucked up by not resigning.

Earl Warren, who hated Nixon, resigned in 1968 out of a justified that Nixon would win and be able to nominate his replacement. LBJ screwed it up and the old conservative coalition won one more once in an oddly under-discussed event of great historical significance, but this doesn’t change the fact that Warren retired strategically.

Potter Stewart resigned as soon as the term after Reagan’s inaugural ended.

Burger and Powell are less obvious cases, but resigned with Reagan in office; they’re certainly not counter-examples.
Brennan and Marshall were unable to resign strategically, but not for lack of trying. Both very strongly did not want to be replaced by a Republican president and stayed on for years in horrible health hoping to live to see the next Democratic administration. Brennan was forced off the Court by a massive stroke and Marshall resigned on his near-deathbed with Bush’s approval rating north of 70%, and on his way out said “there’s no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They’ll both bite.” Neither of them believed there was a norm that required them not to consider who would replace them.

Blackmun, who was very invested in the survival of his most famous opinion, stayed until Clinton was elected and resigned midway through his first term.

Byron White, a conservative but still a Democratic partisan, consciously and explicitly waited to resign until a Democratic president was elected although he had been sick of the job for a long time.

Both Stevens and Souter waited until Obama was elected to resign. (It is striking that there have now been three Republican nominees who have put more weight on the survival of Roe v. Wade than Clinton’s two nominees.)

If you think Anthony Kennedy would have resigned in 2018 if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, I have 20 acres of oceanfront property in Shelby County, Alabama to sell you.

an 8-member court seems likely: Dem in the WH and McConnell in the Senate refusing to vote on any nominees

cool

8-member court overturning Roe v. Wade, possible but not guaranteed. I'm not sure Roberts would be cool with such a sweeping decision.

To absolutely no-one's surprised.

To absolutely no-one's surprise

https://splinternews.com/another-sexual-misconduct-allegation-against-brett-kava-1838129679?utm_source=splinter_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2019-09-15

Then there's this Louisiana case.

A woman’s nominal right to choose to have an abortion is worth nothing if Republican-led state legislatures and governors — with the blessing of the Supreme Court — can ensure that there are no or almost no clinics or doctors available to provide the procedure. Since its 2016 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the court has explicitly recognized this fact, which is why it then struck down a Texas statute designed to force the closure of most of the state’s abortion clinics.

But on Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it would be hearing a virtually identical case, June Medical Services v. Gee, to determine the constitutionality of a similarly draconian Louisiana abortion statute targeting that state’s clinics. Given that it’s been a mere three years since the first decision, and the cases themselves are virtually the same, the only factor that would necessitate a full hearing is the makeup of the Supreme Court itself.

All of that is to say: The religious conservatives who held their noses and voted for Trump in 2016 to get a conservative-leaning court peopled with the likes of Brett Kavanaugh in order to overturn Roe v. Wade are about to get a major reward at the expense of the reproductive freedom of American women.

I may start a new thread. Nino's been stinking for too long.

Scalia's as dead as that crab meat!

Goes to show it’s in the Neens

Mark Joseph Stern on today's Title VII case:

There was a low-key beautiful moment when Kagan almost referred to a trans person’s “biological sex,” then stopped herself and thought for a moment and said “sex assigned at birth” instead. ❤️

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 8, 2019

read thread

Interesting interview with Corey Robin, author of a new book about Clarence Thomas.

I put the book on hold at the library. Robin's The Conservative Mind is terrific.

*REACTIONARY mind

Robin was on Doug Henwood to talk about that book recently and it's fucking fascinating

good news
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/supreme-court-lets-sandy-hook-143642777.html

otoh (short thread)

It looks to me like the Supreme Court is going to uphold the Trump administration's DACA rescission, probably by a 5–4 vote. I think the conservative majority will say that the rescission was handled lawfully, while a few conservative justices will say DACA itself is illegal.

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) November 12, 2019

I think this was a foregone conclusion - legal reasoning is pretty clear ie a President did it unilaterally, therefore a President can undo it unilaterally

in this case the weakness in the system was Congress and the POTUS, not the SCOTUS.

otm

Wow.

Inside the Federalist Society dinner featuring Brett Kavanaugh.

A man and a woman just stood up, blew a rape whistle, and yelled:

“WE BELIEVE CHRISTINE FORD! WE BELIEVE SURVIVORS!!”

Via @KristinMinkDC

pic.twitter.com/O3wGPujoae

— Joshua Potash 🆘 (@JoshuaPotash) November 15, 2019

should happen everywhere he goes imo

Ruth Marcus has a book about Kav:

It was a historic moment in April 2017 when Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy presided over the ceremonial Rose Garden swearing-in for the court’s new member, Neil M. Gorsuch: the first time a sitting justice was joined on the nation’s highest court by one of his former law clerks.

But a secret meeting moments later in the White House was just as significant, according to a new book by Ruth Marcus, a Washington Post deputy editorial page editor.

Kennedy requested a private moment with President Trump to deliver a message about the next Supreme Court opening, Marcus reports. Kennedy told Trump he should consider another of his former clerks, Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was not on the president’s first two lists of candidates.

“The justice’s message to the president was as consequential as it was straightforward, and it was a remarkable insertion by a sitting justice into the distinctly presidential act of judge picking,” Marcus writes in “Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover.”

Seems on the level!

Aren't they meeting to discuss the cert petition re 45's taxes today

https://abovethelaw.com/2019/10/conservative-supreme-court-justices-are-showing-their-biases-on-twitter-now/

That’s an October article about Alito and Kavanaugh posing for a photo with an anti-gay organization, and how they should have to recuse themselves from cases, but won’t

Today's ruling is just gross

every time this thread is bumped my heart just sinks

FUCK

i wish more and more that somehow Obama had rammed Merrick Garland through during recess. if we'd known what was coming....fuck.

fucking disgusting

Give me your tired, but not too tired, we’re not made of money here

Wait, I havent read the ruling itself yet but based on the news isn’t this just a temporary, not on the merits decision that says no injunction for the moment?

yes, it allows the trump administration's plans to proceed (not sure on the timeline for their plans to implement?) while challenges work their way up the system

Man, I was really thrown off by the emoji in your dn for a sec, like what an odd reaction to that

it does insert a sometime unwanted levity to any topic

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

holy shit, have never considered this. NYT on the beat!!!!

so i think i have one more 'good' year

The New York Times reports:

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a third major case on the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s health care law, granting petitions from Democratic state officials and the House of Representatives in a case with the potential to wipe out the entire law. The court did not say when it would hear the case, but, under its ordinary practices, arguments would be held in the fall and a decision would land in the spring or summer of 2021.

Democrats, who consider health care a winning issue and worry about possible changes in the composition of the Supreme Court, had urged the justices to act quickly even though lower courts had not issued definitive rulings. They wanted to keep the fate of the Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare, in the public eye during the presidential campaign and to ensure that the appeal was decided while justices who had rejected earlier challenges remain the court.

possible changes in the composition of the Supreme Court

I'm assuming this is code for RBG

xp some real galaxy brain stuff that this is actually good because it's bad electoral politics for the trump administration

Die, voters!

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court denied its support Monday for the growing consensus that voting in the midst of a pandemic may be best done by mail.

Refusing to depart from its opposition to last-minute changes that can confuse voters, the justices blocked a federal court order that voters in Wisconsin should be able to vote absentee for six days beyond Tuesday's primary election.

"Extending the date by which ballots may be cast by voters — not just received by the municipal clerks but cast by voters — for an additional six days after the scheduled election day fundamentally alters the nature of the election," the court said in an unsigned opinion.

The vote broke down on ideological lines, with the four liberal justices dissenting.

"The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic," Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote. Under the court's decision, "either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety. Or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own."

BREAKING: Supreme Court on 5 to 4 vote sides with Wisconsin Republicans and says absentee voting cannot be extended

There’s a Wisconsin primary scheduled for Tuesday to vote on an elected judge position ( and I think Biden v Sanders also). Democratic governor tried to postpone the election and Republican legislators won in Wisconsin courts and federal that Wisconsin constitution doesn’t give governor that power. Governor tried to extend period for submitting absentee ballots and Republicans challenged that all the way to US Supreme Court and won.

The issue for Wisconsin voters should be that the Republican legislators blocked the governor's plan in the first place, putting them in jeopardy. If the state constitution legit doesn't give the governor that power (which seems likely), then surely the legislature had the power to make that happen and failed to use it to protect the safety of voters. They won the battle, but at the cost of parading in front of the whole state what assholes they are.

does this mean that in-person voting will happen? it does seem like an attempt to suppress the vote. I hope the democrats can optimize the number of voters by November

The in place voting is now scheduled for tomorrow but they’re having trouble getting volunteers to work polling places and likely will have less polling spots open.

The jerks who elected Republican legislators are probably happy with Republican legislators doing this.