Last Friday, we asked you to vote for your Favorite Supreme Court Justice.
Over 1,300 votes were cast. Here are the results:
Interesting! Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll. And thanks to SCOTUSblog and Professor Althouse for linking to the poll, which generated many votes. Update: Vote for your LEAST favorite Supreme Court justice by clicking here.
Our random observations on the results, after the jump.
Some of you think we give Dahlia Lithwick, the legal affairs writer for Slate, a hard time. And it’s true that we often disagree with her (even if we always acknowledge her writerly talent). But we do find ourselves agreeing with much in her latest piece, criticizing recent critiques of the news media by several Supreme Court justices.
In response to Justice Antonin Scalia’s remarks during a panel sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, Lithwick writes:
Scalia said, “The press is never going to report judicial opinions accurately.” It seems our reporting is limited to: “Who is the plaintiff? Was that a nice little old lady? And who is the defendant? Was this, you know, some scuzzy guy? And who won? Was it the good guy that won or the bad guy?”
I’m still running the Nexis search for the reporting on last spring’s campaign-finance reform decisions that includes the terms “little old lady” and “scuzzy guy.” But it seems to me the reporting on that case was a lot clearer than the opinions.
And although, if anything, the Supreme Court press corps is hypercautious in its attention to legal detail at the expense of sensationalism, Scalia dismisses them, and their readers, because, in his view, “nobody would read it if you went into the details of the law that the court has to resolve.”
While we agree with Justice Scalia’s general point that news accounts of court cases often focus more on the facts, including facts about the parties, and less on the legal issues — which may not be surprising, given that the facts are more accessible to a lay audience — we do believe that most Supreme Court reporters try their best to explain the legal nitty-gritty to their readers. And many of them — including Lithwick, Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times, and Charles Lane of the Washington Post — have formal legal training.
A little bit more, after the jump.
During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Samuel A. Alito, some conservatives grumbled about one nickname bestowed upon him: “Scalito.” They argued that it unfairly treated him as a jurisprudential clone of Justice Antonin Scalia, without recognizing his independence as a thinker. Some also viewed the nickname as reflecting anti-Italian prejudice.
We’d like to reclaim the name of “Scalito,” and put it to legitimate use. Let’s turn it into the judicial equivalent of “Bennifer” (the first and best celebrity couple neologism, superior to “Brangelina” or “Vaughniston”). In these pages, we will use “Scalito” to refer to Justices Scalia and Alito whenever they appear in public together — as they did this past weekend.
Approximately 400 people attended a panel discussion on judicial independence, held this past Saturday at the Washington Hilton. The discussion, sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, featured Justices Scalia and Alito, as well as William S. Sessions, a former FBI director and federal judge, and Lynn A. Battaglia, a Maryland appeals court judge.
Not surprisingly, Justice Scalia stole the show. Accounts of this Article III celebrity sighting focus primarily on his remarks. His main point was to question judicial independence as an absolute virtue: “You talk about independence as though it is unquestionably and unqualifiably a good thing. It may not be. It depends on what your courts are doing.”
Familiar stuff. His remarks about media coverage of the courts were far more amusing:
“The press is never going to report judicial opinions accurately. They’re just going to report, who is the plaintiff? Was that a nice little old lady? And who is the defendant? Was this, you know, some scuzzy guy? And who won? Was it the good guy that won or the bad guy? And that’s all you’re going to get in a press report, and you can’t blame them…. Because nobody would read it if you went into the details of the law that the court has to resolve.”
Sad but true. And Justice Alito echoed some of these sentiments:
Alito complained that people understand the courts through a news media that typically oversimplifies and sensationalizes. He said people’s ability to amplify their comments globally about judges and their opinions on the Internet takes a toll on the judiciary.
“This is not just like somebody handing out a leaflet in the past, where a small number of people can see this,” he said. “This is available to the world. … It changes what it means to be a judge. It certainly changes the attractiveness of a judicial career.”
Justice Alito, are you calling into question the value of writing about judges on the internet? If so, you’re hurting our feelings…
(By the way, if you haven’t done so already, please cast your vote in our poll to find out your Favorite Supreme Court Justice. We’ll close the voting once we have about 1,000 votes, which strikes us as a reliable indicator of ATL reader sentiment. Right now we have a little over 600. To vote, click here. Thanks!) Scalia Rips Judges on Abortion, Suicide [Associated Press]
This is NOT an official ATL contest. We won’t offer any commentary on the candidates, to keep the proceedings objective. This is simply a random Friday poll that we’re conducting for our own curiosity.
Readers of this site are generally interested in, and highly knowledgeable about, the United States Supreme Court. Many of you might be called “legal nerds” or “judicial groupies” (both of which we view as badges of honor).
So while we have you all here, we thought we’d ask:
We know that such online polls have been conducted previously. See, e.g., here. And we have seen articles in which legal experts are asked to name their favorite member of the SCOTUS. See, e.g., here.
But we haven’t seen such polls or articles for the Court as currently constituted, i.e., after the appointements of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. So we thought we’d run such a poll and see what results we get.
Please cast your vote, so this tally will be as accurate a representation of ATL reader opinion as possible. Thanks!
* Buttons — isn’t that the new song by the Pussycat Dolls? Yes; but it’s also the issue in a case argued before the Supreme Court yesterday. Question Presented: Was a murder defendant’s right to a fair trial violated when the judge allowed relatives of the victim to sit behind the prosecutor, sporting buttons with the victim’s photo on them? [New York Times; Washington Post; Slate]
* A federal judge rules that candidates for the state bench can’t be barred from personally soliciting campaign contributions. So let’s just shove C-notes down their robes. [New York Times]
* Ex-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling won’t take the Martha Stewart approach: he’d like to remain free on bail while his appeal winds its way through the courts. This makes sense: his sentence is likely to be way longer than Martha’s brief stay at Camp Cupcake. [Washington Post]
* Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was slumming it earlier this week at the Second Circuit. The Times provides a UTR-esque account of the “mind-numbing” proceedings. [New York Times]
* The Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in Cunningham v. California, an important case raising the constitutionality of California’s sentencing scheme — and one that will have implications for other state sentencing systems. (Readers of the tea leaves suggest that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito may not be in complete agreement with Justices Scalia and Thomas. Who are you calling “Scalito”?) [Sentencing Law & Policy; Los Angeles Times; New York Times]
On October 1, before the start of the new Supreme Court Term, the annual Red Mass was held at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, in Washington, DC. Held before the opening of the judicial year, the Mass is celebrated “to invoke God’s blessing upon… all protectors and administrators of the Law” (description here).
Tony Mauro of the Legal Times reports on this year’s Red Mass, which was attended by numerous legal celebrities:
By law, the Supreme Court opens its fall term on the first Monday in October.
But by tradition, the Court season begins the day before, with the annual Red Mass celebrated at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Matthew in Washington, D.C.
At this year’s Oct. 1 mass, four of the five Roman Catholic justices — along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, several other Cabinet members, and dozens of other area judges and public officials — were in the pews.
No sign of President Bush, who did attend the Red Mass in 2005. But plenty of other big names were in the house (of worship):
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who, with his wife, Jane, was active for many years in the Catholic organization that sponsors the mass, was in the front row, as were Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas. Justice Samuel Alito Jr., the other Catholic on the Court, did not attend, nor did the non-Catholic judges, some of whom have come in the past.
Actually, no. But Matthew Thiessen, lead singer of the Christian pop-punk band Relient K, bears a striking resemblance to Philip Alito, Justice Samuel A. Alito’s handsome college-age son.
Check out the photo montage at right. The two pictures on the left are of Phil Alito; the two pics on the right are of Matt Thiessen. Both are pale and pretty boys, with light- to reddish-brown hair, and delicate facial features.
If you STILL question the resemblance, we refer you to the music video for Relient K’s hit single, “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” (see below). It’s a delightful song. And in the video, Thiessen — who was surely subjected to a makeover by a stylist — looks especially Alito-licious. Enjoy!
[T]he Supreme Court’s two newest justices have decided, at least temporarily, to stick with the Court’s clerk-pooling arrangement…. [B]oth Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. said they will stay in the “cert pool,” as it is called, for the current term.
Roberts said he will participate on a “year-to-year basis,” and Alito said the same….
The use of the certiorari pool does, by the way, increase the power of law clerks at the Court:
In a 1997 speech when he was in private practice, Roberts said he found the pool “disquieting” in that it made clerks “a bit too significant” in determining the Court’s docket. During his confirmation hearings in January, Alito said he was “aware of the issue” surrounding the pool. He added: “We cannot delegate our judicial responsibility. But . . . we need to find ways, and we do find ways, of obtaining assistance from clerks and staff, employees, so that we can deal with the large caseload that we have.”
One could quibble with Justice Alito’s description of the SCOTUS caseload as “large.” The Court hears fewer than 100 cases each Term, and the number has been decreasing over the years. And the cert pool may actually be contributing to that decline, as Lyle Denniston suggests.
But we heart Justice Alito, so we won’t quibble.
Another consequence of the pool:
In their new book on the Court’s clerks, Sorcerers’ Apprentices, authors Artemus Ward and David Weiden chart the history and impact of the pool. At the same time the pool has increased the power of clerks in the gatekeeping function, they say, it has made clerks less candid and more timid in their recommendations. “The pool writers are going to be less candid than they would be with their own justice,” says Ward in an interview. “It has a chilling effect.”
It would be interesting if another justice were to join Justice Stevens in declining to participate in the cert pool. But would that make a clerkship with that justice less desirable? Clerks to that justice would have to spend more of their time doing mind-numbing cert review work, getting down into the factual weeds of lower-court records — instead of working on the sexy, pure legal issues presented by merits cases.
Maybe there’s a collective action problem here. Who would be willing to go first? Cf.Harvard ending early admissions.
Interesting — but not our problem. Shrug. Courtside by Tony Mauro: Pool Party [Legal Times]
Commentary: The Court’s caseload [SCOTUSblog] Cert Pool [Wikipedia]
It’s that time of the year again, kids: when the members of the Supreme Court release their financial disclosure forms. We now get to engage in a little bit of financial voyeurism, learning which justices have gold-plated gavels, and which ones must settle for plastic. Delicious!
Unfortunately, the information isn’t as comprehensive as it could be. Asset values are reported in ranges, not exact dollar amounts. Primary residences aren’t included. But we’ll take what we can get.
As was the case last year, Justice Ginsburg and Justice Souter top the list. Here are the asset ranges, justice by justice:
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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