by Bill Otis · Oct 22, 2020 4:56 pm
That may be the question, but Joe Biden won’t be giving us the answer. Instead, he’s going to create a commission to “study” the issue of court packing, and other supposed judicial “reforms,” and get back to us.
Creating a commission is one of the oldest dodges in DC, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Mr. Biden would recur to it — he having been in this town since the War in Vietnam. But it’s still just a dodge. Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Oct 12, 2020 2:31 pm
Former Vice President Biden has said that the Republican effort to seat Judge Amy Barrett on the Supreme Court is unconstitutional, and Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that it constitutes court-packing. Both statements are so palpably false that it’s very unlikely Biden or Coons believes them. So what’s going on?
by Kent Scheidegger · Oct 5, 2020 9:17 am
Today is the First Monday in October, the first day of the new term for the U.S. Supreme Court. As usual, the new cases the Court has taken up in its opening conference were announced last week, see this post, and today’s orders list contains a very long list of cases turned down. Along with shooting down the Stairway to SCOTUS suit against Led Zeppelin, there are a few other items of interest from the orders list. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Sep 29, 2020 2:10 pm
The nomination of Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court has focused new attention on a 1998 law review article she co-authored with John Garvey, Catholic Judges in Capital Cases. This article is unlikely to be a roadblock to her confirmation, but it does raise a question that needs to be answered.
Right out of the gate, we should note what Professor Garvey, the senior author of the article, wrote in the WaPo last week. “It would hardly be reasonable to hold Barrett responsible for everything we said back then, when she was still a law student and the junior partner in the endeavor.” Quite right. Even as an indication of her views at the time, the junior partner does not typically decide the positions that will be taken. Further, one’s views on issues may change with time and experience. That was 22 years ago, and a lot of water has passed under her bridge since then. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Sep 22, 2020 3:02 pm
The confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices has gone far downhill over the years, beginning with the dirty attack on Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Anyone nominated to the high court can expect to be smeared. Now we seem to have gone a step further, where simply being on the “short list” brings out the smear-mongers.
Eleventh Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa is on the short list. As far as I can determine from reading her opinions over the last two days, she appears to be a solid, mainstream jurist. She is under attack for not recusing herself from a case involving Florida’s felon re-enfranchising law. There is nothing to this attack. Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Sep 9, 2020 5:14 pm
President Trump today put out a new list of potential SCOTUS nominees, in addition to the list he put out four years ago.
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