Breaking News

Friday round-up

The nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia continues to generate coverage and commentary.

Coverage comes from Nina Totenberg of NPR (who had early coverage here), Bill Mears of Fox News, Lydia Wheeler of The Hill, Robert Barnes of The Washington Post, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Adam Liptak of The New York Times, Timothy Noah and Brian Mahoney of Politico, German Lopez of Vox, Karoun Demirjian and Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post, and Scott Lemieux of The Guardian.

In The New York Times, Michael Shear and Eric Lipton report on “the team of former aides that has assembled to help” the president “push for his Supreme Court nominee,” while at Bloomberg BNA, Rebecca Wilhelm reports that Garland “has generally been deferential to Environmental Protection Agency regulations.” And Lauren French of Politico reports that “some African-American lawmakers urged Congressional Black Caucus colleagues to skip the meeting with Valerie Jarrett because of discontent with President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.”

Commentary comes from Lyle Denniston, who at Constitution Daily explains that the “simple reality is that the future of the court is very much on the line right now, even though that has not gained as prominent a position as it should have in the presidential primary debates this election season”; from Jason Steed, who in the Huffington Post argues that Republicans should “take the best they can get, and confirm Garland as the newest justice on the Supreme Court”; from Will Rosenzweig, who at Hosts of Error criticizes the criticism of potential nominee Judge Jane Kelly; from Howard Wasserman at PrawfsBlawg; from Jeffrey Rosen, who in The Atlantic calls Garland’s nomination “a victory for judicial restraint”; from Emily Crockett, who at Vox suggests that “on abortion, President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, is a mystery”; from Ilya Shapiro, who reacts to the Garland nomination in two posts for Cato; and from Rick Hasen, who at his Election Law Blog suggests that “a Justice Garland would be moderately liberal on election law issues, probably voting with the former liberal justices in most election cases.”

In Slate, Lawrence Baum and Neal Devins argue that the Garland nomination “reflects the practice of recent Democratic presidents to balance ideology with other goals by appointing moderate liberals,” while “Republican presidents over the past 25 years have put ideology first by appointing strong conservative to the court,” and Eric Posner contends that, “whether Garland votes as a liberal or a moderate liberal, this means the court will shift radically from the right to the left.”  At Dorf on Law, Michael Dorf suggests that Garland’s age could actually be an advantage, while at Adequate Man, Jay Willis has a “mostly legalese-free guide to how America makes a Supreme Court justice.”  At his eponymous blog, Kenneth Jost suggests that “history may well list Merrick Garland as the best Supreme Court nominee ever not to get a hearing or a vote,” while in her column for The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin suggests that “it is difficult to imagine any votes been changed by Republicans’ refusal to consider Garland. ”

On Wednesday Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a web briefing (video) on Zubik v. Burwell, the birth-control mandate case, while at Bill of Health Blog, Gregory Lipper looks at whether the challengers’ claims are sincere.

Briefly:

  • At ACSblog, Bidish Sarma contends that the Court’s recent decision in Wearry v. Cain “may be most notable, however, for raising a critical and lingering question regarding prosecutors’ Brady behavior: do Supreme Court justices understand how prosecutors actually decide whether to disclose ex-cop attorney evidence to criminal defendants?”
  • Tom Lutey of the Billings Gazette reports that the Court has ordered Montana to respond to a challenge to the state’s open primary system.

 

If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, or op-ed relating to the Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com.

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Friday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Mar. 18, 2016, 6:31 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/friday-round-up-311/