SCOTUS Watch (and other stuff)

Cuomo Update: In a move opposed by my senator, the NY Assembly gave Cuomo a week to respond to the AG report.   I rather them just get on with it, but don't know if a short delay matters much as a whole.  The clock is ticking all the same -- for instance, the impeachment process requires a month delay after the impeachment itself is submitted.  One interesting wrinkle is that during a trial Cuomo would have to aside. 

There is some support in ending the practice of a general Supreme Court recess from July to September (with emergency exceptions popping up over the years). It might be better if the Court used the time to more publicly (as some justices over the years do small scale, such as overseas talks and such) to promote legal understanding and other things.

The Supreme Court is not totally off. We do have summer orders. And, individuals members deal requests to them in their lesser known role as heads of individual circuits. Sometimes, since it only pops up on case pages buried inside the website, actions like Breyer's rejecting a request in a Big V case are less apparent. It might be useful if the public was aware of such cases, repeating my support for FAQs on basic procedures.

Others are more apparent (showing up on the Orders Page), like Roberts asking for a reply. The case, per the request, involves a claim that "Puma Biotechnology defamed Dr. Fredric Eshelman by falsely accusing him of fraud and being replaced as CEO of the company he founded as a result." Roberts temporarily held up the decision below, response due by 8/11.

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I follow Senate Periodicals on Twitter to keep a track of Senate actions. As the Senate works on the bipartisan portion of Infrastructure Week, this was noted Thursday night:

By a vote of 50-49, the Senate INVOKED Cloture on Executive Calendar #250, Eunice C. Lee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit.

[She was confirmed on Saturday, 50-47.]

President Biden also announced a "sixth" round of judicial nominees, highlighting again the diversity involved.  

Eunice C. Lee is of that caliber: she is a black woman with a legal aid background, the latter notably true for multiple nominees (judges are much more likely to have prosecutor backgrounds).  Note that after filibustering Obama nominees was taken to a certain level (aggravating a back/forth in place since at least the 1990s), that was gone for executive nominees.

Nonetheless, there has to be a majority cloture vote all the same, part of the usual pace of legislative action at least in the Senate.  The party line vote (one assumes) suggests she is somehow deemed controversial and/or Republicans might just want to voice displeasure of tossing in speeding along judicial nominees in the middle of other business.  

Both really amounts to hypocrisy given how Moscow/Graveyard Mitch handled judges. But, I figure both might be involved in this case, though it is simply petty that every last Republican would go along with that shit. (Graham is out with COVID.)

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A law professor, who also has written/testified about the "shadow docket," which is quite relevant here, discussed the complexity of the legal debate over the eviction moratorium. The question rests on the statutory reach of an old law and if there is (as a statutory matter) appropriately applied here. There might be constitutional concerns others raise, property rights or otherwise, but the immediate issue is of that nature. 

As he notes, the complexity should be remembered -- I would add that we would balance all the issues involved, including the need of a short term moratorium as the Delta variant increases the need of such a moratorium during the summer months as Congress acts.  I find this take wrong.* The short statement of one member of the Supreme Court doesn't settle everything here.  

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* This is not surprising.  He continuously comes off as a liberal concern troll.  I think Adam Winkler's take is more appropriate.  

Will SCOTUS intervene?  Maybe. But, they shouldn't overturn the moratorium. Furthermore, even if they do, they likely won't for some period of time. This gives Democrats and others the benefit of time, which they very well should use. This is not something that should go indefinitely. But, we are in the middle of a new uptick and other things are going on.  

Finally, to me, a basic problem is the opaqueness of the shadow docket decision. Unlike LCT, net, I don't think they shined much in their decision there, including being so unclear.  The confusion that arose is far from surprising.  Maybe, if the Supreme Court as a whole was more clear, it would have helped the clarity of what Congress and Biden could do.