SCOTUS Watch

Odds and Ends: Justice Jackson is settling in (not yet assigned a circuit, the assignments made the morning of her noon swearing in). The only apparent thing (other than Kavanaugh needing to go out the back door to avoid protestors at a restaurant) that happened is a couple typos were corrected in opinions. I dropped a line in the comment box, so to speak, but the calendar is not updated to include summer orders. 

Death Penalty: Ramiro Gonzales was due to be executed by Texas this week.  He wanted to donate organs and there was some reason why that was blocked.  A lower court case also ordered certain religious accommodations to be made. An attempt was made to get a commutation.  But, in the end, the Texas courts held up his execution for the time being. This underlines that even in Texas, there have been very few executions in recent days.  There is still another execution scheduled later this month.

Dobbs: Going back to Kavanaugh, there has been continual news on abortion, including a controversy involving a ten year old rape victim. A major thing was multiple actions (adding to the Administration's statements) from the Biden Administration.  The argument "nothing" was done or that he "finally" did things here is basically a slander.  

You can argue he could do more (though I have my doubts how useful it would have been), but this general framing is a united whole of "Biden is weak" (we are even talking about 2024 elections, when we have November to worry about).  It is both wrong and horrible on a strategic level.  

Chad Meredith: There is also a continual focus (with Biden sometimes attacked in vehement ways) about some "deal" that apparently (the details are hazy) are being considered with McConnell involving an anti-abortion district court judge.  Again, the details are hazy.  Some say it is about U.S. attorneys.  

But, that is far from clear.  It very well might be about helping to confirm judges overall.  I realize it looks bad (abortion? why are we making deals with that guy?) and it's fine for the chair of the Judiciary (Durbin) and others to want answers.  It is just naive to be too mad about Biden not wanting to talk about internal conversations here.  

Bottom line, it an asinine concern on some basic level.  The Senate still has to confirm the guy.  It doesn't have to be put to a vote and meanwhile more judicial nominees were dropped.  Yes.  There are a lot of people in the queue here.  Why don't we focus on getting them confirmed right away, especially if (as some seem to grant as a given) you think Democrats will lose control of the Senate by January?  That is where the focus should be, including summer recesses (I saw something about August as a whole) delaying things.  Dale Ho is one major name still pending.  

The Supreme Court is a travesty now, but lower courts will remain very important with even district court judges have a lot of power. So, we need to confirm as many judges as possible.  That is not hazy at all.  

[I now see the latest is that ... get this ... RAND PAUL's opposition for now has put a kibosh the the deal.  Again, we are told "no deal" just a "personal favor," but suddenly we are supposed to take this at face value and get all upset at Biden being all buddy-buddy? Sure.  I won't link it, but a usual suspect also read this as "oh Biden is a loser again." 

Who knows the full truth, but note one tidbit that the nomination would be tied to a conservative judge taking senior status. The sixty-six year old judge, however, likely only would do so if she knew a conservative would replace her.  The net there is basically getting a youngster, but she is young enough to stick around for quite some time. Again, a whole lot of nothing.]

10 Things SCOTUS Can Do Now: Fix the Court (the "term limits are practical" people) has a list that is mostly sensible.  

I would be somewhat surprised if SCOTUS stops live audio though I personally do not find it that much of a big deal if you had to wait a bit to hear audio.  The lack of opinion announcements (even the ones pre-COVID in the 2019 Term isn't at Oyez.com) is bad and that is fairly likely to happen.  Figure the fence will go eventually and the leak investigation will peter out, if it already has not.  

Drafting an ethics code is something that should be done though if they wanted to do so, they would have by now. Basically, what should happen is Congress should do that (toss in a few bits about Sotomayor not totally disclosing and kick RBG while she's dead a bit much about talking about Trump, if you want).  We already have some financial disclosure but being more complete can be a fairly mild "see we are doing something."

The Supreme Court History Board thing is a bit of inside baseball, but it's fine to toss that out.  Good luck though with the current membership of the Court.  I would say the same thing about fixing (which would require major re-writing) of the abortion and gun rulings.  The more pinprick thing was to grant the fix recently asked of an opinion, one which they somehow rejected without any comment, even though the government accepted it.

I have long thought they should post -- take advantage of that page on the website -- their speeches online; toss in video.  Also, when the Court's press office provides statements to the media, it should also be posted on the press release page as a rule. Repeatedly, this is not done, and we get reports of what the PIO (public information office) said only in media accounts.

[Maybe, Justice Jackson at least will take advantage of the speech transcript page, which in recent years was only used by RBG and Stevens.]

As to the last bit, I guess I see some value in justices not having official party affiliations.  And, the press release there notes that it is actually hard to find out the affiliations of many of the justices.  I am not excited that Thomas or any of them really -- given all else they are doing -- might not be a registered Republican.  

There are a range of things (the idea by Fix the Court that each side should show up at different types of ideological events is fine; have Sotomayor show up at the Federalist Society) that can be done.  Roberts is able to hide his party affiliation, apparently for security reasons (not sure why).  I am not aware of that route being possible in various places, including New York.  

And, if you do not have a party affiliation, here and other places, you cannot vote in the party primaries, and that is often where the action happens.  If there are about five Republicans in the City Council, if you are a Republican, being able only to vote in November is not that helpful.  So, in that respect, no party affiliation can strip justices (for little effect) of a key aspect of their right to vote.  

Anyway, I think the suggestions are as a whole (especially 1-4 and 7) are good ones.  I also want at least a transcript of opinion announcements. The video of Jackson's swearing (along with the video of the Stevens 100th anniversary event) was a good start on openness.  I do not expect it from them, but we should have video as a whole, like so many other courts. 

==

Okay, looks like nothing new happened.