About Me

My photo
This blog is the work of an educated civilian, not of an expert in the fields discussed.

Friday, October 04, 2019

SCOTUS Watch

And Also: Braves blew it late and Nats didn't really show up when basically mid-range starters on both teams did well. If you want to play the Dodgers well, you win that game. Not really interested in these games (hard to even root for either Nats or Dodgers) though if the Rays compete, the Rays/Astros games might be interesting.

The First Monday in October is the official beginning of the October 2019 term and as usual fuck you Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

Anyways ... There will be an order list next week to cover a lot of actions dealt with in the "long conference," but today was the time to see what cases they granted.  Two of the lesser cases invovled cases the national government was concerned about including the U.S. Forest service supporting a pipeline blocked by a lower court opinion. Mark Sanford (running for POTUS) also might be interested since it concerns the Appalachian Trial.  The law struck down for "encouraging" illegal immigration on First Amendment grounds also seems interesting.  How broadly will the justices take their current 1A jurisprudence? How will Stolen Seat Guy vote?

The big news, for most people at least, is that they took the hospital privileges case. CJ Roberts months back was the fifth justice to hold the decision.  Now, on the merits, the justices should have summarily overturned it.  Unless they want to change the law.  They took that "fetal remains" case to basically punt and RBG/Sotomayor* were right that they should have simply let the ruling stand.  OTOH, then Justice Thomas couldn't write that off the wall concurrence.  Prediction: they will find a way to uphold the law here by watering down the precedent. 

Meanwhile, though it might seem trivial given the other options out there, this does sound like a good case for lower court impeachment. At the very least, the facts warrant a referral to the House for further investigation. Plus, the judge is a Clinton appointee, so Republicans should be fine with it. Realize the House is busy at the moment, but a referral would show the seriousness of the situation, putting it in the hands of those constitutionally set in place to deal with the situation.

Various impeachment stuff here.  The Chief Justice's role is interesting and would like to find out more.  ETA: Found something regarding Rehnquist's own account and a discussion on Roberts.

===

* Wish RBG stopped with this sort of thing.  When was the political situation that much better?  The 1990s?  Also, a new guide to oral argument (good reading) says "generally" (whatever that means) they now will allow an advocate two minutes before questions.  Sotomayor often is an earlier questioner though RBG also often likes to put in the first one.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your .02!