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

Monday, March 02, 2020

SCOTUS Watch

SCOTUSBlog ignores such things but Kenneth Jost tweeted this helpful bit about an order that dropped on Friday: "Alito issued partial stay, late Friday (2/28), of broad discovery order by USDC-EDPa in multidistrict antitrust litigation against pharmaceutical companies." The blog does provide helpful summaries of full order lists generally and did so today, but not sure why they aren't fully consistent since there simply aren't too many of those stand alone orders.  And, they have traditionally ignored summer order days.

The big news last week was a DC circuit ruling with an unfortunate panel (especially for that circuit; en banc is very possible) that blocked a congressional subpoena lawsuit on standing grounds. The dissent emphasized that the case was particularly easy since the subpoena was in respect to an impeachment investigation.  This underlines why the second impeachment count (which was much broader than this one lawsuit) was on point.  The ruling is lousy and the slow-walking underlines why Congress needs to address the general issue of litigation of this nature somehow. 

Prof. Segall thought the opinion was bogus but focuses on the Supreme Court "making shit up" here with a comment by me.  I think there is a form of "constitutional common law" if somewhat different than normal common law.  One thing there, which I didn't emphasize in my comment but touched upon somewhat by another comment, is justices case by case make law with some important input from current societal and legislative action.  This is seen in the briefing -- what law and society thinks equal protection, let's say, means in 2020 will be different there than 1920. 

There is also a new House bill that is geared to openness of court proceedings (it expressly covers a concern of mine -- opinion announcements),  ethics rules applied to justices and free access to online materials.  It provides lag time to allow courts to do this. It should, not saying it will, have bipartisan support.  People like Chuck Grassley has supported openness but not sure about the rest.  After all, #1 example of ethics will be for some Justice Kavanaugh.  Something like this should be put out there by those running this year. 

The big news in the Orders List is granting a pair of cases to take the ACA (sic) litigation involving a right wing lawsuit even some usual suspects think is stupid.  The question is why take it now -- there was an argument to decide it before the election, but doesn't look like that will happen (?) -- but anyways, pretty good shot it will be kicked to the curb ala King v. Burwell.  Which even some who supported the dissent there would agree is the appropriate result.  Still, one never knows, and seems sensible to wait until after the election, at least, if they aren't going to decide it before then. 

As usual, the order had a variety of things, including two other grants of mild interest (Leah Litman, who wrote that ACA opinion piece, is always interested in ACCA cases). Gorsuch wrote a statement to make sure him agreeing the bump stock case is not ripe doesn't mean he is a friend of Chevron or doesn't care about gun rights or something.  Prof. Dorf wrote about that case here.  Gorsuch is full of himself there -- e.g., agency deference very well affects "liberty" as seen by the range of restraints that result following agency regulations. 

Abortion case will be heard later this week. Fun times.

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