Justice Thomas Speaks at University of Alabama

From the Tuscaloosa News, H/T How Appealing,

Friday was the 18th anniversary of Thomas’ swearing in as a Supreme Court justice and his second visit to the UA Law School. He was nominated in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush after serving for just a year on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“I argued against it, I’d been on the Court of Appeals long enough,” he said. “But when the president calls you, the words out of your mouth are ‘Yes, Mr. President.’”

“I found law school difficult. You see my old textbooks, and you’ll see that the textbooks won,” he said. “My journey was in many ways very unhappy and enormously difficult.”

“That, to me, is the shame of the process,” he said. “I think people should leave and know that they’ve said their piece.”

Thomas said that he preferred to hire law clerks from modest backgrounds.

“There are too many up there who think they should be there because they’re from an elite background,” he said. Students laughed when he described how former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died in 2005, could get things done with a glare.

“He was more of a father figure of the World War II generation,” he said when asked how Rehnquist differs from Chief Justice John Roberts. “Chief Justice Roberts is a contemporary.”

What happens when no one wants to argue a case in front of SCOTUS? The Justices Appoint Counsel. Is this Kosher?

From the Columbus Dispatch (H/T How Appealing):

When the justices agreed to hear the case, they discovered that nobody would defend the appeals court ruling.So in April, an official of the Supreme Court called Merritt, a professor at Ohio State since 1995. We need a lawyer to argue a case before the justices, the official said. Can you give us an answer in the next day or two?

She quickly read through the appeals court ruling and told herself, “I can argue this case.”

This is kind of an odd move from the Supreme Court. Even if no one is willing to argue the case, the Justices, sua sponte, select counsel to argue and brief the case. I suppose the Justices have a vested interest in making sure that a case granted cert is effectively argued on both sides. But isn’t this kinda meddling? If the party below does not want to contest the case, why should the Justices get involved. Is there even a live case or controversy at this point? Is this Kosher?

SCOTUS Inside Scoop: Sotomayor was not wearing the Collar/Neck Doily Ginsburg gave her

In perhaps the most important SCOTUS fashion development since Solicitor General Kagan’s non-Morning Coat attire, I just heard from someone who attended oral arguments that Justice Sotomayor was not wearing the Collar/Neck Doily Justice Ginsburg gave her.

Although she wore the Collar in the group photo:

She did not wear it in her individual photo, unlike Justice Ginsburg

Ginsburg with Collar

Sotomayor without Collar

Could this serve as a bone of contention between the two female Justices? Or maybe Justice Sotomayor, who never wore the Neck Doily on the 2nd Circuit, just didn’t like the fashion. We shall see.

Photo Gallery: My Ode to Article III, and Pictures of Me With Other People I Admire

Here is a facebook gallery I assembled of pictures of me with some of the cooler people I’ve met. The gallery includes pictures of me with Judges, Professors, Politicians, and other people I admire. I won’t say that the pictures are arranged in any particular order, but they’re also not totally random (e.g., Thomas before Scalia, Easterbrook before Posner). Later, I’ll post a gallery of all of my autographed Constitutions.

Sotomayor ties Van Devanter for Justice with most syllables in last name

At four syllables each these two jurists share a totally irrelevant distinction.

Technically Van Devanter is two words. But I am a fan of Dutch butter cookies so I’ll give the Horseman the benefit of the doubt.

So-to-ma-yor

Van-De-Van-Ter

OT09 Term Begins, SCOTUS Plays Musical Chairs. New Bench Seating Arrangement.

Today is the day! October 5, the beginning of the Supreme Court’s October 2009 Term.

In light of Justice Souter’s departure, and Justice Sotomayor’s arrival,I realized that the Nine will play a bit of musical chairs on the bench. As you may know, the Justices are seated by order of seniority, with the Chief in the middle. The most senior associate justice sits to his left, next senior associate justice sits to his right, and it alternates down the bench. With the new configuration, Justice Sotomayor will take Justice Alito’s seat. Alito J., no longer the baby of the court, gets to move on up to the left side. I had tickets to arguments today, but sadly, duty of my court calls. I’ll listen to the recorded arguments later. I’m curious to see how Sotomayor, J., gets settled in.

From left to right.

Alito	Ginsburg	Kennedy	Stevens	Roberts	Scalia	Thomas	Breyer	Sotomayor
Seat 1	Seat 2	Seat 3	Seat 4	Seat 5	Seat 6	Seat 7	Seat 8	Seat 9

It’s pretty cool that Nino and Thomas will be sitting next to each other. Maybe Nino can break Thomas out of his quiet streak. And Thomas is still sitting next to Breyer, his former benchmate, so they can continue yukking it up while the oral advocates sweat it out.

And, as I previously blogged, here is a picture of the new Nine assembled:

The New Portrait of the New Nine

They are all able to pose for their individual shots. Why can’t they pose, even for a second, for the group shot?

Pic: Justice Sotomayor’s 1L Facebook Photo from Yale Law School

While I was trolling around the Yale Law School Library this weekend, I snapped a shot of Justice Sotomayor’s 1L Facebook photo from 1978!

Justice Sotomayor's Yale Law School Facebook 1L Photo

Start of the October 2009 SCOTUS Term. JoshBlogs is SCOTUS Themed Today.

To Supreme Court Junkies, the first Monday in October is equivalent to Opening Day in baseball. And this is an even more exciting opening day, because it is Justice Sotomayor’s first official day on the job (asides from that rare early Hillary Movie oral argument). So all posts today will be SCOTUS related in one form or another, with a focus on the Nine’s newest member. I will return to my regularly scheduled programming tomorrow (and I have a few good posts in the works).

Today the Court will hear:

1. South Carolina v. North Carolina (138 Original) — participation of non-parties in Original cases
2. Maryland v. Shatzer (08-680) — limits on police questioning after a suspect asks for a lawyer
3. Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter (08-678)) — right to appeal compelled disclosure of attorney-client communications

h/t ScotusWiki

What better way to kick off a term than an original jurisdiction case?

The George Mason Federalist Society will be sitting in on Mohawk v. Carpenter, so say Hi if you see them at the Marble Palace!

Update: Per BLT, the first argument will be rescheduled.

Judges Gone Wild (at the Red Mass). Why is this different from Justices Going to Europe?

Today is the Washington, D.C.’s Red Mass. Washington lawyers, including several Supreme Court Justices. There is a bit of controversy, over whether this creates a tension in the separation of church and state (still looking for the separation clause in the Constitution).

“I don’t think there is any doubt that people in that congregation, including the Supreme Court justices, are going to listen to what is said. They might hear something phrased in a way you might never hear it in the court, but it might become a lingering factor in their decisions. … People who are concerned about the Red Mass worry about this kind of undue influence, an influence that no other group, religious or otherwise, has on those nine men and women.”

Over at Volokh, Jonathan Adler writes:

It seems to me that Lynn’s concerns are misplaced.  If Supreme Court justices cannot attend an annual mass, or any other event at which powerful worldviews are advanced, without compromising the integrity or independence  of our judicial system, we have much bigger problems than this one service.  We expect justices to be able to make legal decisions based on the law in front of them, setting aside their personal moral views and any desire they may have for approval by outside groups.  And even if the occasional Red Mass sermon prosletyzes on a current controversy, I think the justices can handle it.  No matter what is said about abortion, school prayer, or any other issue on which the church has a strong position, I doubt it will have much influence on the decisions of Justice Breyer or any the other justices who attend.

It amazes me the things the left gets upset about. If we are to presume that the Justices are so fickle, that a single sermon or Mass will impact their views on huge Constitutional issues, how does that reflect the Left’s faith in the role of the Judge? Actually, this fear is telling.

Justice Kennedy, for example, takes annual trips to Salzburg, Austria. Jeffrey Toobin in The Nine has written how this exposure to European ideals has changed his views of the Constitution and the Rule of Law. If the Left seeks to criticize the Justices from going to a single mass, perhaps the Right should admonish Kennedy from going to Europe to have his views modified?

Why is going to Church any different from studying law in Austria? They both have the power to persuade, and change a Judge’s mind. Perhaps this just reflects the Left’s negative feelings towards organized religion, but their embrace of European legal values.

Is the Supreme Court Irrelevant?

At the conference, many of the panelists are talking about Professor Barry Friedman’s new, somewhat controversial argument, that the Supreme Court is irrelevant.

Since its inception, the Roberts Court has looked to avoid trouble. In the 2006 term, the Court’s center actually stopped short of overruling past decisions in at least four big cases, despite heckling from Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the far right. This approach has prompted some to label Roberts a judicial “minimalist.” In the voting rights case itself, the chief justice delivered a stern lecture to Congress about how the provisions of the law “raise serious constitutional questions”–but then he walked away from the brink using that most hoary of judicial cop-outs, the “avoidance canon”: “[I]t is a well-established principle governing the prudent exercise of this Court’s jurisdiction that normally the Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of a case.”

Of course, predicting the Court’s demise is chancy business–there’s always a potential big moment just around the corner. Still, don’t expect much in the way of blockbusters from the Roberts Court anytime soon. Stuck between political forces on the left and conservative disarray on the right, the Court will most likely continue to creep rightward with no bold agenda.

There has been a lot of talk about the shrinking docket of the Supreme Court, but Friedman seems to be going out on a limb to say that it is not only taking fewer cases, but taking less important cases. I would point to Heller, and the recent cert grant in McDonald v. Chicago as pretty important blockbuster cases. A lot of the scholars here seem antagonistic to Friedman’s views. So we’ll see how this idea pans out.