Wednesday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Jul 20, 2016 at 10:58 am

Yesterday marked 125 days since the nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland, the president’s nominee to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  Lawrence Hurley of Reuters reports Garland’s achievement of the “unwanted milestone,” with more coverage from Alex Gangitano of Roll Call.  Alvero Huerta discusses the stalemate over Garland’s nomination and the Court’s four-to-four tie in the challenge to the Obama administration’s deferred-action policy in a post at Medium, arguing that the deadlock in the immigration case shows that “the political dog-and-pony show currently playing itself out in the Senate and being pushed by Republicans who will go to great lengths to stymie the president’s nominee has tied the hands of the Supreme Court.” 

Commentary relating to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s remarks about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and her later comments indicating that her remarks were “ill-advised,” comes from Erwin Chemerinsky, who in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times defends Ginsburg, arguing that her “comments violated no law or ethical rule” and from Rick Hasen and Dahlia Lithwick, who contend in Slate that, even after Ginsburg’s most recent statements, “the issue of judicial speech on political matters is hardly over and done with.”

Briefly:

• At USA Today College, Sophia Tulp suggests that the Court’s recent ruling allowing states to conduct breath tests, but not blood tests, of suspected drunk drivers without a warrant “could lead to an increased number of DUI convictions in the U.S., including among college-aged youth.”
• At ACSblog, Bidish Sarma urges the Court to revisit its forty-year-old decision on absolute immunity for prosecutors, arguing that the ruling “did not make much sense in 1976, and it makes no sense today.”
• At Crime and Consequences, Kent Scheidegger weighs in on the federal government’s petition for rehearing in the challenge to the Obama administration’s immigration policy; he suggests that, given the uncertainty about when a ninth Justice may join the Court, the request resembles “some dimly remembered nightmare from property law class.”

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