Monday round-up
on Feb 22, 2016 at 12:06 pm
On Friday the Supreme Court denied a request by North Carolina to delay implementation of a new districting plan. Lyle Denniston covered the order for this blog, with commentary coming from Rick Hasen in two posts (here and here) at his Election Law Blog.
Mark Walsh reports for this blog on Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral on Saturday. Further coverage comes from Nina Totenberg of NPR and Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required).
Scalia’s legacy continues to attract commentary. At Blue Ridge Now, LeRoy Goldman compares Scalia to Sir Thomas More, a Roman Catholic saint, calling him “a man for all seasons.” David Savage of Los Angeles Times characterizes Scalia’s “complex legacy” as that “of a legal thinker who inspired and shaped a generation of conservatives, even though his landmark rulings were few.” Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker takes a more critical look at Scalia’s views – characterizing them, with an allusion to The Great Gatsby, as “like so many boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required) comments on Scalia’s legacy on campaign finance and on the future of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, while in an op-ed for Reuters, Rick Hasen argues that because of this jurisprudence, “[p]lacing a few more Scalias on the Supreme Court would likely put America’s current participatory democracy at risk.”
Lawrence Hurley of Reuters discusses the consequences for the Court of Scalia’s passing. At Hosts of Error, Will Rosenzweig considers how the Court’s remaining conservatives may now organize themselves, especially if President Barack Obama appoints a liberal: “Will they rush to fill the rhetorical absence of Scalia and celebrate righteous defeats? Or will they follow the lead of their Chief (and the model left by the more liberal justices when they were a minority) to pick their spots and push for the best, achievable outcomes.” For New Republic, Simon Lazarus argues that “if Roberts stays true to his own precedents and principles – even if doing so yields a few rulings that will spark Republican outrage – the Court will defy” “cynical forecasts” about the politicization of the Court. At Casetext, Eric Ruben assesses calls from gun advocates for a “principled judicial conservative” and argues that “[j]udicial conservatism, as we have seen, simply does not imply a maximalist view of the Second Amendment,” while at Jost on Justice Kenneth Jost criticizes what he sees as conservative activism, especially with regards to the Court’s stay of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clear Air Program.
Briefly:
- For Medium, Daniel Hemel contemplates having Justices selected via national referendum.
- At Hamilton and Griffin on Rights Leslie Shoebotham previews today’s arguments in Utah v. Strieff, which, “as a result of Justice Scalia’s sudden passing, may well result in a 4-4 decision.”
- For The Atlantic, Ryan Park comments on the advanced ages of the Justices and concludes, more broadly, that “America’s legal structures for addressing age discrimination are, in important respects, out of step with the accepted neurological understanding of aging.”
- The Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School previews next week’s arguments in Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Taylor v. United States.
- At my eponymous blog, I discuss recent scholarship claiming to debunk the “myth” of the missing 1924 Court photograph.
