Hamilton content? Hamilton content! Hardly any topic is more ubiquitous these days than Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash musical. Fans, academics, artists and writers of all stripes – even Supreme Court justices – have found cause to analyze or drop references to it. Seemingly the only platform it hasn’t graced is SCOTUSblog.
That is, until now. With Hamilton and the Law, released in October from Cornell University Press, editor Lisa Tucker has invited 32 luminaries from across the legal profession to “read[] today’s most contentious legal issues through the hit musical.” And how to discuss “contentious legal issues” without turning to the Supreme Court? While the book deals with a wide range of topics, Tucker and her compatriots – many of them respected Supreme Court advocates and scholars – spend a good deal of time gleaning lessons from the musical regarding the justices and their role in our constitutional republic.
Lisa A. Tucker is an associate professor of law at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law, where she specializes in legal research and writing as well as the Supreme Court. A former contributor to SCOTUSblog, Tucker is also the author of the novel Called On.
Thank you, Lisa, for participating in this Q&A for our readers, and congratulations on the publication of your latest book. Continue reading »
This article is part of a symposium previewing Trump v. New York.
Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Government of the Heritage Foundation and the manager of Heritage’s Election Law Reform Initiative.
In Trump v. New York, the Supreme Court should be looking only at the constitutional and statutory issues: whether President Donald Trump was within his legal authority to direct that noncitizens in the country illegally be excluded from the population used for congressional apportionment. The policy issue is very important, of course. What the president did was fundamentally fair. And, under the Supreme Court’s precedent in Franklin v. Massachusetts, Trump was also within his legal authority to do so. Continue reading »
The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued the calendar for its January argument session. The session will be a relatively quiet one, with only five hours of argument over four days. The justices will not hear argument on two days: Jan. 18, which is a federal holiday observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Jan. 20, when much of the District of Columbia will shut down for the presidential inauguration – and Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath of office across the street from the court. Continue reading »
Here’s a round-up of Supreme Court-related news and commentary from around the web:
Happy Thanksgiving!
We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion, please send it to roundup@scotusblog.com. Thank you!
This article is part of a symposium previewing Trump v. New York.
Jennifer Nou is a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School.
The census saga continues. This time, however, the Trump administration is more truthful about its motivations. It wants to count immigrants who are in the country without authorization, not — it turns out — to enforce the Voting Rights Act, but rather to influence the reapportionment of legislative seats. Specifically, the government has issued a presidential memorandum to exclude these immigrants from the apportionment base, the state population counts used for reallocation. The case now before the Supreme Court raises important jurisdictional, statutory and constitutional arguments against the memorandum. By focusing only on the statutory claims, I will argue for an interpretation that subjects census-related policy decisions to more robust administrative process. Doing so, I hope, will help mitigate the extent to which the census is a means of political entrenchment. Continue reading »
SCOTUSblog and Goldstein & Russell, P.C. are seeking to hire a full-time employee to serve as firm manager for Goldstein & Russell, P.C., and deputy manager of SCOTUSblog. The position is based in Bethesda, Maryland, and requires occasional in-person work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading »
This article is part of a symposium previewing Trump v. New York.
John S. Baker Jr. is professor emeritus at the Louisiana State University Law Center. He filed an amicus brief in support of the federal government.
At next week’s oral argument in Trump v. New York, the justices should ask the government why it hasn’t excluded all foreign nationals from the congressional apportionment calculation, whether they are in the country legally or illegally.
The Trump administration is right to exclude people in the country illegally from apportionment. But it should also exclude all other foreign nationals, such as foreign students studying on student visas. No foreign national qualifies as “an inhabitant,” as that term was understood at the Founding. The Supreme Court in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) agreed that only “inhabitants” count for apportionment. Continue reading »
This article is the first entry in a symposium previewing Trump v. New York.
Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election and is scheduled to be sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021. Ten days before Biden’s inauguration, President Donald Trump is scheduled to send a report to Congress that contains the number of people living in each state and indicates how many seats in the House of Representatives to which each state is entitled. On Monday, Nov. 30, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. New York, a challenge to the Trump administration’s plan to exclude people who are in the country illegally from the state-by-state breakdown used to allocate seats in the House.
If the court upholds the plan and the administration is able to implement it before leaving office, the new method of apportioning House seats could shift political power away from states with large immigrant populations and toward states with fewer immigrants. Continue reading »
Here’s a round-up of Supreme Court-related news and commentary from around the web:
We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion, please send it to roundup@scotusblog.com. Thank you!
What is the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”? John Elwood, head of Arnold & Porter’s appellate and Supreme Court Practice, sits down with SCOTUStalk host Amy Howe to explain the often opaque work that happens outside of the court’s regular roster of argued cases. For much more on the shadow docket and its increasing importance, check out SCOTUSblog’s recent symposium on how this group of cases has shaped issues such as voting procedures, coronavirus responses, capital punishment and more.
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