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Is Stephen Breyer About To Retire? His Clerk-Hiring Spree Suggests Otherwise.


Muda69

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https://reason.com/2021/04/15/is-stephen-breyer-about-to-retire-his-clerk-hiring-spree-suggests-otherwise/

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"We are now firmly in the window when past justices have announced their retirement, so it's officially worrisome that Justice Breyer has not said yet that he will step down. The only responsible choice for Justice Breyer is to immediately announce his retirement." So declared Brian Fallon, executive director of the progressive activist group Demand Justice. Fallon's outfit has clearly set its sights on the 82-year-old jurist, launching a new pressure campaign last week under the none-too-subtle slogan Breyer Retire.

Is Breyer actually planning to step down anytime soon? Probably not, at least judging by the fact that Breyer just finished hiring a full slate of four clerks for the Supreme Court's 2021–2022 term, which begins in October. Typically, a justice who is nearing retirement does not do so much staffing up for the future.

Of course, Justice Anthony Kennedy did announce his retirement after he hired a full slate of clerks, so there is a recent precedent for Breyer doing the same thing now. On the other hand, as the legal writer David Lat has observed, "I do think Justice Kennedy was especially likely to try and cover his tracks; if Justice Breyer has hired four clerks for OT 2021, I think it's most likely because he expects to be on the Court at that time." Lat, a savvy court watcher, thinks that Breyer's hiring spree means there is now "a 70-30 chance that Justice Breyer remains on the Supreme Court for at least one more Term."

Breyer recently disappointed progressive activists in another big way. In a Harvard Law School speech earlier this month, the justice came out firmly against court packing, telling those who would rejigger the size of the Court for the purpose of gaining a short-term political advantage to "think long and hard before embodying those changes in law."

In my recent feature story, "Don't Pack the Courts," I noted that President Franklin Roosevelt's famous 1937 court-packing scheme failed in large part because so many of his fellow Democrats opposed it. FDR's "most effective adversaries turned out to be members of Roosevelt's own party," I wrote, "such as the legendary progressive jurist Louis Brandeis, who deftly maneuvered behind the scenes to ensure the bill's ultimate defeat. Like so many others at the time, Brandeis was frankly aghast at FDR's blatant power grab."

Perhaps Breyer is gearing up to play the Brandeis role today.

Once can hope so.

 

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Biden’s EO establishing a commission to “study” Supreme Court “reform” provided the study was to be completed within 180 days. So, the report ought to come out right about the first Monday in October. Coincidence?

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Court-Packing Bill Is an Attempt to Intimidate Sitting Supreme Court Justices

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/court-packing-bill-is-an-attempt-to-intimidate-sitting-supreme-court-justices/

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In October 2020, shortly before the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, a Siena/New York Times survey asked likely voters: “If Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court and Joe Biden is elected president, do you think that Democrats should or should not increase the size of the Supreme Court to include more than nine justices?”

 

By a two-to-one margin — 58 percent to 31 percent — voters said they were opposed to Court-packing.

If a strong majority of Americans oppose Court-packing — and a Court-packing bill doesn’t have votes to pass Congress — why did congressional Democrats go ahead anyway on Thursday and introduce a bill to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court from nine to 13?

There are a few reasons.

One is that the issue matters to the activist progressive base. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate, survived a primary challenge in 2020 and is firmly committed to doing whatever it takes to make the Left happy — even if it isn’t good politics for the Democratic Party in 2022 or 2024.

A second reason for introducing the bill, of course, is that many Democrats are deadly serious about blowing up the Supreme Court if they ever think they really need to do it — and introducing a bill now is a necessary first step to get there. As Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, a left-wing judicial activist group, tweeted: “Even the sponsors would agree it doesnt have the votes yet. The point in introducing the bill is to build support for it, a project that will only be aided by bad rulings from this 6–3 Court.” Dan McLaughlin notes that congressional Democrats could be a couple of Senate seats away from having the votes to abolish the filibuster, which would be a prerequisite to packing the courts.

But the third and perhaps most significant reason that Democrats introduced their Court-packing bill is to intimidate the Supreme Court in such a way that Democrats never really feel they need to pull the trigger on Court-packing.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell argued in a floor speech that the bill is all part of an ongoing effort to intimidate Supreme Court justices. He said on Thursday that with the Court-packing bill, the “Left wants a sword dangling over the justices when they weigh the facts in every case.

“Just like the last time the Democrats tried packing the Supreme Court, this scheme is meant to intimidate the justices into making liberal rulings,” Arkansas senator Tom Cotton wrote on Twitter.

Roll Call reports that some congressional Democrats came very close to explicitly agreeing with that argument.

“The Court needs to know that the people are watching,” Democratic congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia, a co-sponsor of the Court-packing bill, said at a press conference on Thursday. House Nancy Pelosi said she was taking a wait-and-see approach and has no intentions right now of bringing the bill to the floor. But as the bill’s lead sponsor in the House, Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, said on Thursday: “I believe that as events unfold, as the Court comes down with decisions destructive to a woman’s right to choose, as they come down with decisions destructive to the climate, as they come down with decisions destructive of civil liberties, I believe that the speaker and others will come along.”

“The threats are the point,” McConnell said Thursday. “The hostage-taking is the point.”

Mr. McConnell is correct.

 

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11 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Court-Packing Bill Is an Attempt to Intimidate Sitting Supreme Court Justices

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/court-packing-bill-is-an-attempt-to-intimidate-sitting-supreme-court-justices/

Mr. McConnell is correct.

 

That rat bastard is the last one who should comment on the Court. 

Edited by DanteEstonia
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