Monday round-up
on Mar 14, 2016 at 6:49 am
Coverage and commentary relating to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the battle over his successor continue to dominate Court-related news. A report that the president has narrowed his shortlist to three candidates comes from The Washington Post, while Dylan Matthews of Vox profiles six potential nominees.
Coverage relating specifically to Judge Sri Srinivasan, often mentioned as a potential candidate for the Court, comes from Alexander Bolton, who at The Hill discusses liberal groups’ concerns about Srinivasan, while Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post notes that Srinivasan would be the first Asian American nominated to the Supreme Court and Julie Zauzmer of The Post discusses what it might mean to have the first Hindu Justice on the Court.
Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times reports that, as “President Obama moves closer to choosing a Supreme Court nominee, Democrats appear to have settled on a conclusion: his best political play is the least political one.” Edward-Isaac Dovere and Josh Gerstein of Politico report that when a nomination is announced, “the White House and its allies will unleash a coordinated media and political blitz aimed at weakening GOP resistance to confirming the president’s pick.” David Herszenhorn of The New York Times reports that “Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned that both parties would pay the price, leading to the selection of judges with increasingly partisan views.” At the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, Tom Kertscher reports that “Republican Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and U.S. health and human services secretary, says the GOP-led U.S. Senate should hold hearings if President Barack Obama makes a nomination to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Sam Hananel of the Associated Press reports on the secrecy surrounding the vetting of potential nominees. And Noam Scheiber of The New York Times reports that the new vacancy on the Court “highlights a growing a rift between the country and the nation’s highest court and questions of economic power and support for big business.”
At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost weighs in on the nomination battle, reporting that “some of the new some of the Republican senators backing the planned obstruction of President Obama’s eventual nominee for the Supreme Court are now conceding that the tactic is pure politics with barely an ounce of historical precedent or constitutional principle to justify it.” And in The Weekly Standard, Adam White discusses a new report from the Congressional Research Service that “highlights ways in which the court can easily adjust to the new reality of having eight members instead of nine.”
Briefly:
- Naomi Lachance of NPR looks back at some of the Supreme Court’s past opinions and what they might mean for the battle between Apple and the FBI in the dispute over Apple’s refusal to help the FBI unlock the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter.
- In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Justin Driver looks back at the anniversary of the Southern Manifesto and contends that “it may be more accurate to understand it as the first breath of the prevailing order.”
- Robert M. Sanger of Death Penalty Focus interviewed Justice John Paul Stevens about his views on the death penalty.
- At his own blog, Andrew Hamm summarizes recent legal scholarship that provides a new perspective on the 1805 impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase.
- In his column for The Economist, Steven Mazie looks back at last week’s summary reversal in V.L. v. E.L. and observes that the Court “upbraided the Alabama Supreme Court for failing to honour a neighbour state’s adoption order that gave V. L. and E.L. joint custody of their children 9 years ago.”
