The hint of the outcome during the first day of oral argument (on the impact...
I think there was a clue to Roberts’ thinking during the first day of argument—during the argument on the applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act, an obscure “jurisdictional” statute, which precludes...
View ArticleMy opinion: Almost no practical limiting effect on Congress’s regulatory powers
Some people think Roberts cleverly used this case to severely limit Congress’s regulatory powers. Others strongly disagree. I’m with the others. I think that as a practical matter, this will have...
View ArticleJohn Roberts and Elena Kagan: Mirror Images of Each Other
The second biggest surprise of the day, after the survival of the Affordable Care Act, is that we’ve never really gotten over our collective crush on John Roberts. How else to explain today’s...
View ArticleThe Rightwing Supreme Court Justices’ Fair-Weather "State Sovereignty” Canard
Two days ago, Dan posted an entry by run75441 titled “SCOTUS Chastises Congress and the Executive Branch.” The post’s title wasn’t quite accurate; run’s post was about Chief Justice John Roberts’...
View ArticleYes. Yes! YES!!!!: “New Subcommittee to Focus on Federal Courts and...
Well, well, well. The Senate Judiciary Committee has created a new subcommittee this year to specifically oversee the federal courts and the nation’s bankruptcy system, including administration and...
View ArticleJohn Roberts’ Curious Voting-Statistics Sophism Misconstrues The Census...
In a blog post titled “In Voting Rights Arguments, Chief Justice Misconstrued Census Data” on NPR’s website, veteran NPR Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg deconstructs a sophism offered by...
View ArticleTom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog tweets, during the short break after the first...
Breaking: 1st update- #prop8 unlikely to be upheld; either struck down or #scotus won’t decide case. More in 30 mins. This is the more important of the two gay-marriage cases. Tomorrow’s argument will...
View ArticleHeightened Scrutiny of John Roberts: He Says He Will Vote to Uphold the...
WASHINGTON — As the justices of the Supreme Court struggled with the question of same-sex marriage this week, politicians in Congress kept handing down their own verdict. One after another, a series of...
View ArticlePro-business decisions
New York Times points us to a new study on the Robert’s Supreme Court decisions and ‘pro-business’. NOT long after 10 a.m. on March 27, a restless audience waited for the Supreme Court to hear...
View ArticleThe Fundamental Principle That States Are People, My Friend
OH. WOW. I actually called this exactly right in my post yesterday—this being, well, this. [Inadvertently-omitted link to court opinion inserted. H/T Dan Crawford.] Specifically: Roberts’ 5-4...
View ArticleAbout That “Poking Into Every Nook and Cranny of Daily Life” Thing, Chief...
If there is no mystery about the nature of the chief justice’s views, I remain baffled by their origin. Clearly, he doesn’t trust Congress; in describing conservative judges, that’s like observing that...
View ArticleThe Way to Stop Discrimination on the Basis of Race Is To Stop Discriminating...
The Way to Stop Discrimination on the Basis of Race Is To Stop Discriminating on the Basis of Race. — Chief Justice John Roberts, Jun. 28, 2007, writing for a four-justice plurality in Parents...
View ArticleTurns out Alito isn’t the only justice who conflates the Securities Exchange...
Roberts suggested that he believes Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood can bring forth claims of religious freedom, saying courts have held that “corporations can bring racial discrimination claims as...
View ArticleOK, so what exactly does the APPEARANCE of quid pro quo corruption look like?...
John Roberts wrote in yesterday’s opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC that Congress may still “regulate campaign contributions to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption.” He then limited...
View ArticleThe REAL news from the McCutcheon v. FEC opinion
“There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” That’s how Roberts began the opinion. So I guess we can now assume that the Court will...
View ArticleNo, Mr. Kleiner, John Roberts showed that he knows perfectly well how money...
An article by Sam Kleiner posted yesterday on the New Republic’s website is titled “John Roberts shows he has no idea how money works in politics.” Mr. Kleiner must not understand the real purpose of...
View ArticleWhat the Supreme Court’s refusal today to agree to decide whether to strike...
When donors furnish widely distributed support within all applicable base limits, all members of the party or supporters of the cause may benefit, and the leaders of the party or cause may feel...
View ArticleJohn Roberts Introduces a New Favorite Tactic This Term: Sleights-of-Hand...
Roberts suggested that he believes Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood can bring forth claims of religious freedom, saying courts have held that “corporations can bring racial discrimination claims as...
View ArticleJohn Roberts Unwittingly Paves the Way for Eventual Wholesale Liberal...
Chief Justice Roberts’ attempt to portray his decision in McCutcheon v. FEC as minimalist actually shows just how far from minimalist it is. According to the Chief Justice, no one should worry about...
View ArticleCan the SEC prohibit publicly-traded corporations from making political...
It’s already become something of a favorite parlor game among liberals, especially among liberal law geeks, to speculate about when the Supreme Court will strike down state and federal statutes that...
View ArticleSCOTUSblog’s Problem: It’s Not Incorporated [OK, I’m sure it is, but you get...
Last week, the Senate Press Gallery denied SCOTUSblog’s application for a press pass, and advised us that it would refuse to renew the credential it had previously granted Lyle when it expires next...
View ArticleNow That the Supreme Court Has Found a Right to Vote in the First Amendment,...
“There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” That’s how Roberts began the opinion. So I guess we can now assume that the Court will...
View ArticleAh, federalism. Which is in the eye of the beholders. The beholders being...
(Correction appended.) (Clarence Thomas in his separate concurrence]* adds that in his view the First Amendment religion clauses don’t apply to the states in the first place. And it only probably bars...
View ArticleGreece, Greece, I Tell You!
It’s not every day that a law professor has his book quoted by the Supreme Court, and so the University of Baltimore‘s Michael I. Meyerson was understandably intrigued when his 2012 work about the...
View ArticleThe Supreme Court’s opinion in Bond v. U.S. will be about separation of...
Update appended. 5/17 at 1:37 p.m. —- I’ve written several times in the last three-plus years about a Supreme Court case called Bond v. U.S. Actually, to be precise, Bond v. U.S. is two Supreme Court...
View ArticleAWESOME opinion today by Roberts in Bond v. United States!
I’ve written extensively here at AB about a two-time Supreme Court case called Bond v. United States, first three years ago when the case was heard the first time, then in the last few months as the...
View ArticleDavid Brat, et al. v. John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, the Koch Brothers, the...
Uh-oh, hedge fund managers and Goldman Sachs partners. Obviously, few of you are evangelical Christians. So this guy, who wants good markets, has his sights set on you. But, luckily not on that...
View ArticleChris Cillizza Misses the Point. (The most important point, anyway.)
Anecdotal evidence, the basis of so much journalism prior to the rise of the data movement and still, to my mind, over-relied upon — is just that: anecdotal. Roughly 65,000 people voted in the...
View ArticleShaken, Not Stirred: The Supreme neo-Framers (likely) will continue their...
In an email this morning, Bill H asked me whether I know much about a case called Harris v. Quinn, in which the Supreme Court will announce the likely 5-4 majority’s ruling tomorrow. I responded: I...
View ArticleFirst-Reaction Thoughts About Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn
I haven’t read the opinions, concurrence, or dissents in either Hobby Lobby or Harris v. Quinn, so these comments are based on news summaries and quick commentaries by others. But the biggest surprise...
View ArticleLibertarian? Or Fascist-Light?
The shooting death by police of Ferguson, MO teenager Michael Brown, and what has happened in the aftermath, has been blanketing the news for the past few days. It’s a story about race, but it’s also...
View ArticleThe Confidence Fairy v. John Roberts (circa Apr. 2, 2014)
UPDATE: Wow. That tree limb I walked far out onto in my post below turned out to be sturdy after all. A postscript is added below. Update posted 10/9 at 10:45 p.m. ____ There is no right more basic in...
View ArticleThe appalling failure today of Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer,...
This speaks for itself. I’m sure that Kennedy, Roberts and Alito call this ‘freedom’. I won’t guess at what Sotomayor and Kagan call it. But what Breyer calls it, or should, is conflict of interest....
View ArticleDear Greg Sargent: YOU may not know what Scalia and Alito were up to...
The chief justice said almost nothing. — Supreme Court Appears Sharply Split in Case on Health Law, Adam Liptak, New York Times Okay, so how well did my predictions from three days ago hold up at the...
View ArticleObviously, the New York Times Editorial Page is Lying*
I know for a fact that the alleged facts stated in this New York Times editorial today are false. Or at least that, contrary to the editorial’s claim, those facts, if true, no longer have any impact...
View ArticleIn its ACA opinion today, the Court significantly narrowed its...
[T]oday’s victory may have been even more decisive than it looks at first glance. It isn’t just that the Court ruled six-to-three in favor of the government’s position, with John Roberts and Anthony...
View ArticleTaking a page from John Roberts, Jeb Bush solves the problem of workers...
My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from...
View ArticleConservative Legal Movement Week at the Supreme Court
This is Conservative Legal Movement Week at the Supreme Court. (Okay, even more so than most weeks.) Things really get going tomorrow, when the court will hear argument in two...
View ArticleHow I answered a survey from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee about...
I received an email this morning from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, boldprogressives.org, asking that I complete a survey on the Garland nomination. The email began with this question:...
View ArticleConservative 5 Testing Robert’s Court Clout
Was still waiting to hear more on the SCOTUS leak of Alito’s draft opinion to Politico. Pulled up Hullabaloo. I was reading Digby post tonight “Oh my, look who’s leaking (again).” It caught my...
View ArticleAnswering John Roberts Beliefs of Innocence
I had read Dan’s post, “Total Hypocrisy, Franken Pushed Back on GOP” – Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com). Was kind of wondering if there was an answer to John Roberts. Roberts beliefs are they are...
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