Monday round-up
on Feb 13, 2017 at 7:23 am
In The New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports that although Judge Neil Gorsuch’s “record on gay rights is thin,” and it “suggests a deference to religious freedom and a strong skepticism toward using the courts to find a new constitutional basis for L.G.B.T. rights,” “interviews with his friends – both gay and straight – and legal experts across the spectrum suggest that on gay issues, at least, he is not so easy to pigeonhole.” Constitution Daily features a podcast discussing the Gorsuch nomination. At his eponymous blog, Ernie Haffner discusses Gorsuch’s “attacks” on the traditional framework used to evaluate employment discrimination cases, arguing that “even if Gorsuch believes that the McDonnell Douglas framework does not adequately track the ultimate issue of discrimination, that problem can be addressed without doing away with the framework altogether.”
Briefly:
- At Bloomberg BNA, Patrick Gregory profiles Judge Amul Thapar, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, “who was one of four potential nominees that Trump personally interviewed before nominating Tenth Circuit Judge Neil M. Gorsuch” to the Supreme Court, noting that Thapar’s approach is said to be “‘very Scalia-like and Thomas-like’” and that he “would be the first South Asian-American on the court.”
- For Reuters, Lawrence Hurley reports that a concurring opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 2015 immigration case may prove relevant if the administration appeals to the Supreme Court the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upholding the district court’s ban on enforcement of the executive order blocking entry into the United States of people from seven majority-Muslim countries, noting that Kennedy’s legal reasoning in that case “suggests the U.S. Supreme Court’s frequent swing vote would be skeptical” of the ban.
- In the Kentucky Law Journal, law student Jordan Shewmaker looks at Honeycutt v. United States, which asks who is liable for the forfeiture of proceeds from a drug conspiracy, noting that“the Supreme Court’s ruling in Honeycutt will likely affect other federal criminal forfeiture statutes that contain nearly identical statutory language, such as RICO.”
- At CNN, Ariane de Vogue reports that Chief Justice John Roberts is unlikely to address Trump’s recent criticisms of judges and the judiciary, noting that “Roberts walks a careful line supporting the judiciary but keeping it far from the political dysfunction that has consumed the other two branches.”
- In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports on five ways in which the death of Justice Antonin Scalia has changed the court.
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