Round-Up
At Slate, Cullen Seltzer writes this defense of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that its “extra-high rate of review and reversal by the Supreme Court” deserves a more complex explanation than just that it is “populated by a bunch of loose cannon, lefty judges.”
Commentary on and criticism of the school integration decision continues. Law professor Leonard Baynes concludes at the end of his article in Jurist that the majority’s decision in the Seattle and Louisville cases was “immoral,” because it failed to “take into account the historic reality that segregation played (and still plays) in our society.” Guest columnist to the New York Times, Stanley Fish, suggests in this column that the real issue underlying the decision is “whether the Court should be attentive to history and the societal consequences of its decision, or should it turn a blind eye to those consequences and attend only to the principled protection of individual rights” (subscription req’d).
A summary of next term’s New York State Board of Elections v. Lopez Torres, the first ballot access case since 1992 to be heard by the Supreme Court, can be found here.
Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer had a brief Supreme Court quiz. Here’s both the Court-based questions and answers.
Regarding the quiz: I think there’s a better answer to Question 10 than the one the paper gave. Anyone agree? (I don’t want to take away anyone’s fun by saying what it is, at least just yet.)
Comment by Peter G — July 17, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
Yes, Peter. Justice Thomas can pass Justice Douglas if he stays on the Court until he’s 80. He can actually step down a few days shy of 80 and still beat Justice Douglas’s record. So he probably has a better shot than Justice Stevens of beating that record. The authors of the quiz had Justice Stevens in mind, and it was possible to discern their thinking from the wording of the question, but they did phrase the question in a way that, if the question is taken literally, makes Justice Thomas probably a better answer than Justice Stevens.
Comment by Roy Englert — July 17, 2007 @ 6:09 pm
Good one, Roy. And why not ChJ Roberts, too? Appointed at 50, he could serve to 86 (thus equalling Douglas in tenure) and still be younger than Stevens is today. BTW, I got two wrong. And you?
Comment by Peter G — July 17, 2007 @ 10:03 pm
Seltzer picks some low-hanging fruit when he says that reversal rate alone is not a reason for concluding that the Ninth is way out in left field. The Ninth’s more thoughtful critics have acknowledged that for years.
He simply ignores the more perceptive criticism that the Ninth has a disproportionate share of unanimous and summary reversals. Yes, it remains disproportionate after considering size, docket, population, or any way you want to slice it.
Given the spread of ideology on the present Supreme Court, a decision that none of the nine thinks is correct justifiably raises eyebrows. So, too, does a decision that all or most of the nine think is so obviously wrong as to not warrant briefing and argument. A disproportionate number of such decisions over the course of many years does support an inference that this is “a court run amuck.?
Comment by Kent Scheidegger — July 18, 2007 @ 3:44 pm