After the recent leak of Samuel Alito’s draft decision, the Supreme Court Building was surrounded by security fencing to prevent the Justices from breaking out and inflicting further damage.
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Photo by Victoria Pickering via Flickr (CC 2.0 license).
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Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts is shocked – shocked! — that a draft of the impending ruling on a Mississippi abortion case has been leaked to the press. Conservatives are calling the leak an act of treasonous insurrection, a subject they certainly know lots about.
Fact is, the leak is by no means unprecendented. Even the Roe decision, which this court seems bent on negating, was leaked. Warren Burger, then Chief Justice, demanded to know who had leaked the information and threatened to give all the Court’s clerks lie-detector tests:
“Clerks, justices, and other people with access to information have leaked about Bush v. Gore, the Affordable Healthcare Act, and—now—the overturning of Roe, just as in the 19th century, the court leaked information about its ruling in the Pennsylvania v. Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company case. …. Despite all the Court’s august solemnity, full-time reporters covering it are able to break news about it and its inner workings—including, at times, in highly-detailed behind-the-scenes books—because people up to and including the justices leak.”
— “The Supreme Court Leaks All the Time,” Matthew Gault, Vice [links added]
Related:
“Newsmax Host Suggests Ketanji Brown Jackson, Who Isn’t On Supreme Court Yet, Leaked Draft,”
Elise Foley, HuffPost
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Top: Official US Supreme Court photo
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The Supreme Court will begin hearing cases again on October 4th, the first Monday in October, while 2021 NCAA fall sports seasons are well under way. A spring SCOTUS opinion by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh suggests the court and the “amateur sports” monopoly may have a showdown before June.
“Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate,” Kavanaugh wrote. “And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.”
More:
How US college sport became an $8bn inequity racket. And why it may fall,” Bryan Armen Graham, The Guardian
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How should we interpret the 2nd Amendment? If only Antonin Scalia had not been on his high school rifle team …. A Washington Post video by Daron Taylor and Joyce Koh.
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On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, in the dark of night, the Supreme Court decided that during the Coronavirus pandemic, which has killed over 260,000 Americans, places of worship are free to pack the house in sabbath superspreading events. The deciding vote was by Trump appointee and cult member Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who must have a fondness for the traditional Requiem Mass. You may recall that the president’s Rose Garden “reveal party” for Mrs. Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination was itself a superspreading event.
More:
“Supreme Court’s conservatives reject COVID restrictions on New York houses of worship,” David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
“Justices lift New York’s COVID-related attendance limits on worship services,” Amy Howe, SCOTUS Blog
“Supreme Court backs religious groups on New York coronavirus restrictions,” Rebecca Falconer, Axios
“Major shift at Supreme Court on Covid-19 orders,” Josh Gerstein, Politico
“In Covid-19 regulations case, Sotomayor dissent claps back at Supreme Court majority,” Raul A. Reyes, NBC News
Updates:
“Pastor of California Megachurch That Defied Lockdown Order Dies of COVID-19,” Rachel Olding, Daily Beast
“Supreme Court sides with California church protesting coronavirus restrictions,” Robert Barnes, Washington Post
“Brooklyn diocese cheers ruling barring Cuomo’s houses of worship limits,” Lia Eustachewich, New York Post
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Late Monday, a week before Election Day, in the dead of night, Senate Republicans confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She was sworn in quickly, in the dark, behind the White House on the South Lawn. President Trump did most of the talking.
God save the Republic.
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President Donald Trump, commited opportunist, has pledged to nominate a new Supreme Court Justice this week, six weeks before the presidential election. He expects the Republican toadies of the Senate to confirm his pick with all unseemly haste before November 3rd, Election Day.
Mr. Trump has vowed to nominate a woman to replace Justice Ginsburg, and the former reality TV host is drumming up the drama of his choice before Saturday’s big reveal. He likes surprise endings, so Judge Jeanine Pirro cannot be ruled out, but betting favors other candidates. Front runners include U.S. Appeals Court Judges Amy Coney Barrett, Joan Larsen, Britt Grant, Joan Larsen, Allison Eid, and Allison Jones Rushing and Florida Supreme Court Judge Barbara Lagoa. We certainly hope Mr. Trump has their husbands’ permission.
White House staff hope to restrain President Trump’s tendency to decide on woman candidates through swimsuit cometitions.
There are two real reasons why Mr. Trump is nominating a Supreme Court Justice mere weeks before an election, and neither is about conservative principles, since the man has no principles, conservative or otherwise:
1. He desperately needs to divert voters’ attention from the COVID-19 pandemic and his disasterous negligence that has killed 200,000 Americans; and
2. He is likely to be indicted for corrupt business practices, tax fraud, and corruption in office, and hopes to keep himself and his spawn out of prison by filling the high court with Trump-appointed judges.
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South Carolina’s Senatorial Trump toady Lindsey Graham once professed to be a man of principle. In 2016, when President Obama nominated Judge Merritt Garland to the Supreme Court, Mr. Graham pontificated:
“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president … and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”
In 2018, he further specified:
“If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”
In 2020, now that a Supreme Court vacancy has opened six weeks before the election, however, he says he will support confirming Mr. Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ginsburg. Mr. Graham says this time is different, probably because he’s in a tight re-election race himself.
Surprise! Lindsey Graham is not the only GOP hypocrite in the senate who pledged not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during an election year. Cory Gardner, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jim Inhofe, Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, David Perdue, Tim Scott, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Richard Burr, Roy Blunt, John Hoeven, and Rob Portman did as well.
In the last day of the session, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump cannot block New York State prosecutors from examining his tax documents and presenting their findings to a grand jury. Grand jury proceedings are confidential, so don’t expect to see details in the news before election day. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump Twitter-screamed in all caps about “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!“
More:
“Supreme Court Rules Trump Cannot Block Release of Financial Records,” Adam Liptak, New York Times
“Supreme Court Gives Trump Legal Loss, Tactical Win in Tax Cases,” Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
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On Thursday, in a literal 11th-hour brief, an hour before a midnight deadline, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, and strip healthcare from 23 million Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thursday also marked the largest single-day increase in diagnosed Coronavirus cases in the U.S. to date, the day when the CDC admitted that coronavirus cases may be 10 times higher than reported.
More:
“Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Strike Down Affordable Care Act,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times
“Trump administration asks Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare,” Meagan Flynn and Tim Elfrink, Washington Post
“Trump, Intent on Self-Destruction, Asks Supreme Court to Kill Obamacare,” Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
Update:
“Obamacare Versus the G.O.P. Zombies,” Paul Krugman, New York Times
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