Tuesday round-up

By Edith Roberts
on Sep 12, 2017 at 7:13 am

Justice Anthony Kennedy yesterday put a temporary hold on a lower-court order that would have exempted up to 24,000 refugees from the government’s entry ban; the stay will remain in effect until the entry-ban challengers have responded to the Justice Department’s appeal of the order and Kennedy or the full Supreme Court issues a further ruling on the matter. Amy Howe has this blog’s coverage, which first appeared at Howe on the Court. Additional coverage comes from Adam Liptak in The New York Times, Ariane de Vogue at CNN, Matt Zapotosky in The Washington Post, Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed, Josh Gerstein at Politico, Lyle Denniston at his eponymous blog, Laurie Asseo at Bloomberg, and Lawrence Hurley at Reuters. Richard Wolf at USA Today reports that the battle over the entry ban escalated on another front as well yesterday, as lawyers for immigrant rights groups filed a brief on the merits of the case, telling “the justices that the temporary travel ban’s intent is to block Muslims from entering the United States, which violates the Constitution.”

Briefly:

• In The National Law Journal, Anthony Franze and Reeves Anderson provide their annual assessment of the Supreme Court’s amicus docket, reporting that the low-key term in 2016-17 “seemed to have an effect on amicus curiae,” as “friends of the court filed fewer briefs—and the justices cited them less often—putting the brakes on the record-setting trend in amicus participation.”
• At Courthouse News, Tim Ryan reports that “[w]ith the Supreme Court set to hear a potentially landmark-setting case on partisan gerrymandering next month, a poll released Monday shows that most Americans want the judicial branch’s input”; “71 percent of likely voters said they would support ‘new, clear rules’ from the country’s top court.”

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