Supreme Court Watch

Last week had multiple Supreme Court content, even though it started off looking like it would be a slow week. This week had some notable things too. If they decide to do something late on Christmas Eve, I'll add more content later.

The one thing that was particularly scheduled was a response to a request to allow an Arizona anti-abortion law (a "reason" ban based on disability) operate at least partially while litigation is pending. This is just one of the many pending matters where a single justice (member) of the Supreme Court deal with something pending in their circuit(s).  Largely buried on the docket pages, but saw this referenced elsewhere. 

Then, the Supreme Court took two vaccine mandate cases for a special Friday argument (1/7).  This is for a stay application, if something with national reach, and you might think they handle it on the "shadow docket," which has received some controversy given how broadly they are using it.  

The last time such an oral argument according to Law Twitter was Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe in December 1970.  Is the criticism hitting a nerve?  As Amy Howe noted, " the court set a deadline of Dec. 30 for responses in both disputes."  As she notes in another entry, and we saw last week alone, the Supreme Court is hearing a lot of requests against vaccine mandates.  I guess it makes some degree of sense to have an oral argument given the breadth of the two taken, but who can trust this crew?

As expected, Trump asked the Supreme Court to block the release of documents to the 1/6 Committee, waited to the last minute to do so [or maybe it was in a Festivus thing], and take the case for argument.  The Trump financials (fairly recently NY saw the material and people testified)  dragged out too fucking long, in the end the Court adding more complications to help delay in the future.  The "win" for sanity was only limited there.  They should just refuse this on 1/6.

Given how things go, who knows what next week will bring?  The only thing really scheduled is the release of the Chief Justice's End of the Year Report.  We shall see.  

For now, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!