SCOTUS Watch: Election Orders

There was one more order from North Carolina after this summary, but it was more of the same. For now, no more pending, but more likely to come, I think.

Overall, though I am wary about agreeing that Kavanaugh has some "principled take" as compared to a sort of conservative pragmatism, it seems like a good summary overall of the recent election orders.  Roberts seems to have the best principled take on the conservative side -- generally leave states alone, reject lower federal court intervention.  Maybe, he should have applied that to federal legislation too in Shelby v. Holder.  OTOH, the liberals are right to me to at least at times be concerned about voting rights.  

(See also, Election Law Blog to get a sense of the nuances here, which I won't further try to parse. Kavanaugh corrected one bit after Vermont called him out.  Slate and others called him out for a lot more, but you have to start somewhere. Also, on the internet link page, one election case provided a lot of links.  Looking, I also saw additions from last term on the video page though not really sure what the video -- each very small -- adds to the opinions themselves.  One is a cartoon!) 

The election orders this week cite a "Justice Barrett," which suggests maybe she won't be officially called "Amy Coney Barrett," though that it how she is referenced elsewhere on its website.  The official word there is that she did not take part in the various orders. It doesn't say why.  But, the Public Information Office in some capacity (it is reported by those who cover the Court and Rick Hasen noted it at Election Law Blog) informed that: '"Justice Barrett did not participate in the consideration of this motion because of the need for a prompt resolution of it and because she has not had time to fully review the parties' filings."  This would apply to each election related order since she was sworn in.

At least one reporter flagged that it is notable that such a statement was provided since we usually do not get an explanation why a justice ("justice") does not take part.  There was a push for her to recuse so perhaps she wanted to underline that she was not making a final judgment call on that question. Again, there are likely to be further requests for Supreme Court review, including after a very dubious action arising in Minnesota that seems to violate their rules.  I admit my first thought was negative, thinking the special comment was to suggest she is still open to involvement.  Anyway, it annoys me that this is not put on the website. So, we are left to third parties to inform us of such things.  Not good policy.

The first involvement in Court business for our new tainted member is likely today's conference. One thing that has to be done is to reassign circuits.  As of now, it has not been updated.  If things change, including some late afternoon or whenever order drop, I will edit this entry.  As to the voting cases, all of the bad attempts matter, including the people harmed, doubts tossed out there and long term possibilities of skewered over election law.  On the front, things are not clear at this point. 

... well, one of the election orders had a statement that I never saw before -- "Additional opinions may follow."  But, nothing did so far. And, nothing dropped (it's 9:40PM) after I wrote the above.  So, should be okay, though it hasn't always been this year.