If there are any of you out there still interested in something as jejune as the SCOTUS, here is a quick and dirty take on the splits in yesterday's cases.
Today's decisions were particularly interesting in that they split the Court in some unusual ways. These opinions suggest the potential emergence of a pragmatist bloc on the Court, and perhaps provided hints at the Court's direction going forward.
The author of that sweeping decision in favor of criminal defendant rights was Justice Neil Gorsuch, the first nomination by President Trump to the Supreme Court. I testified at his Senate hearing, favoring his confirmation despite unrelenting attacks on him as a “rubber stamp” and an ideologue. Gorsuch has proven his detractors wrong and, as this term has proven, he has emerged as one of the most consistent and courageous voices on the Supreme Court. Indeed, a number of senators and pundits in Washington owe Gorsuch an apology for their attacks on someone who is building a new legacy that could be one of the most lasting on the Supreme Court.
Gorsuch has been fascinating to watch over the last two years. He has departed repeatedly from the right of the Supreme Court to do what he considers to be the right thing. He remains a conservative justice but, like his predecessor Antonin Scalia, he has shown a sense of his own “true north” judicial compass. In doing so, he has often made both the left and right of the Supreme Court seem shallow and predictable in their rigidity.
The census case is one of the worst in a long time.
SCOTUS, and especially Roberts, has such a case of TDS that they seem happy to put the judicial branch in control of all executive/APA political decisions in the most micro and subjective way.
Oh well, it will at least be fun when the next DNC POTUS gets his/her/xir ass sued back to the stone age every single day over every executive decision.