Elena Kagan

* Checks and balances, how do they work? President Donald Trump seems to be looking for anyone and anything to blame for his first 100 days in office being bungled, and he’s finally settled on the rule system that controls the Senate, calling it a “very rough system,” an “archaic system” that’s “really a bad thing for the country.” [The Guardian]

* In other news, according to Reince Priebus, President Trump’s chief of staff, something that the White House has looked into is changing libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations, but “[h]ow it gets executed or whether that goes anywhere is a different story.” Wow. [CNN]

* One things for sure — there’s no Supreme Court retirement watch here: Described as “exuberant,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently exclaimed that she “love[s] her job,” and that Justice Elena Kagan must be absolutely thrilled about Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation, since that means she’ll no longer have to suffer through the incredibly boring tasks typically given to the high court’s junior justice. [National Law Journal]

* “The logic of the decision is hard to accept. You’re OK’ing a system that perpetuates the inequity in compensation for women.” In a disheartening opinion, the Ninth Circuit said employers may legally pay women less than their male counterparts for the same work based exclusively on differences in their prior salaries, even though those differences were recently ruled discriminatory under the Equal Pay Act by a lower court. [CBS News]

* A second suspect has been arrested in the fatal April 10 shooting of Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Myles. Earl Wilson, 45, a man who is “no stranger to the criminal justice system,” was charged with first-degree murder. Per prosecutors, this was a robbery gone wrong, and Myles was not supposed to be killed. Myles is the first Chicago-area judge to be fatally shot in more than three decades. [Chicago Tribune]

* Late last week, the Hollywood Reporter released its annual ranking of the best attorneys who serve the nation’s most glamorous celebrities — the Hollywood 100 — which is always celebrated like “lawyer Christmas in Hollywood for a day.” How many Biglaw attorneys made the list in the tenth edition of the rankings, and how well represented are each of their firms? We’ll have more on this later. [Big Law Business]

* Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the nation’s first female Muslim judge and the first African-American woman to serve on New York’s highest court, was found dead in the Hudson River. We’ll have more on this later. [New York Daily News]

* The Ukraine-related activities of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort are under legal scrutiny — and one of his daughters, lawyer Andrea Manafort, described some of her father’s actions as “legally questionable.” [New York Times]

* Hawaii says “aloha” to the Ninth Circuit in its challenge to Trump Travel Ban 2.0 — and seeks initial en banc review, bypassing a three-judge panel. [ABA Journal]

* So the filibuster is now dead for SCOTUS nominees; are blue slips for lower-court nominees next? [Roll Call via How Appealing]

* Melania Trump settles her defamation litigation with the Daily Mail, getting an apology, a retraction, coverage of her legal fees, and what her lawyer Charles Harder describes as “millions of dollars in damages.” [New York Law Journal]

* Biglaw firms aren’t the only workplaces with gender pay gaps; it’s an issue for in-house legal departments too, including Google’s. [Corporate Counsel]

* Seriously, North Carolina? After its half-hearted repeal of the “bathroom bill,” three lawmakers in the state want to ban gay marriage. [WNCN]

* Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit seems to be a fan of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s views on Chevron deference. [Law.com]

* And Justice Elena Kagan will be throwing a party to welcome Justice Gorsuch to the Court. [Washington Post via How Appealing]

* To answer the question posed in Morning Docket today… no. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Miguel Estrada will not be the next Solicitor General. [Law.com]

* Elena Kagan is finally getting some meme love. [Huffington Post]

* The Texas Supreme Court is hearing arguments about rolling back spousal benefits for same-sex couples. No, you didn’t imagine Obergefell in a fever dream, it’s just Texas. [Slate]

* Can legal remedies be effective against age discrimination? Or will that take too long? [Law and More]

* RIP Barbara Lundergan the first woman to be partner at Seyfarth Shaw. [Crain’s Business]

* How does Neil Gorsuch fare on the issue of abortion? [Constitutional Accountability Center]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiyYk6WbFfU&feature=youtu.be

* “He has always said he’s given to politicians his entire career and he thinks the system is broken. A review of Donald Trump’s political donations show that the Republican presidential candidate has made campaign contributions to several to state attorneys general while they weighed decisions affecting his business, particularly in New York. What’s that about a “rigged” system? [Wall Street Journal]

* Carl Ferrer, the chief executive officer of Backpage.com, was arrested last night on in Houston, Texas, on a California warrant for criminal charges including pimping. If you recall, Backpage.com was recently in the news thanks to a Senate investigation into allegations that the site was helping to facilitate child sex trafficking. [Reuters]

* Per a report publish by Altman Weil, law firm merger and acquisition activity was way down in the third quarter of 2016. Last year at this time, the merger market was 40 percent more active. Why are so dormant? “[F]irms are waiting on the sidelines seeing if it will all work: 6,000-lawyer law firms and that type of thing.” [Big Law Business]

* “Congratulations to the ‘Nino’ Scalia Law School for memorializing, for celebrating this most remarkable judge and teacher.” Justices Kagan, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, and Sotomayor — attended the dedication for the school named after Scalia, while Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Ginsburg attended a dinner in his honor. [USA Today]

* “If students are graduating and they can’t pass the bar, that’s a big problem.” Law schools are coming around to the fact that it’s now a buyer’s market for students, and some will even allow 0Ls to “vet” their schools to evaluate the teaching methods being used. You can even check out professors’ résumés. [U.S. News & World Report]

* Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein will appear at Vermont Law School today, where she’ll meet with members of the law school community to speak about her plan to transition the country using 100 percent renewable energy. Law students will be especially excited to hear about her plans to cancel all student loan debt. [VTDigger]

* “Talk to your classmates, especially those with different views. Even if you come away from it disagreeing even more, at least you know what makes them tick, which is a useful thing.” Last week, Justice Elena Kagan went back to Harvard Law, the school where she once served as dean, to share helpful tips with law students. [Harvard Crimson]

* Federal prosecutors may have dropped their corruption case against ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell after SCOTUS threw out his convictions, but now he’s got some pretty hefty legal bills to pay to Jones Day and Holland & Knight. Right now, he owes more than $10M to the partners who helped clear his name. [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

* A lot of big-time lateral moves were announced yesterday, including Kirkland & Ellis’s mass hiring of all Bancroft lawyers, but Gibson Dunn’s news may top all the rest we’ve yet to cover. Stuart Delery, the former acting associate attorney general of the Justice Department, will join the firm as a partner in Washington, D.C. [Big Law Business]

* Ex-Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has found a new home — or rather, a “strategic affiliation” — with a global Biglaw firm. He’ll be working out of the Calgary office of Dentons, where he’ll work with many former colleagues and advise firm clients on market access, managing global geopolitical, and economic risk. [Huffington Post]

* Given the unusually “circus-like atmosphere” surrounding the Supreme Court confirmation process, anyone who is nominated to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat must “have the backbone to take the risk of being out there in front of the recalcitrant Senate.” Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval apparently didn’t have the testicular fortitude necessary for the challenging endeavor. [WSJ Law Blog]

* President Obama nominated Judge Lucy Koh (N.D. Cal.), the queen of Silicon Valley tech-industry and patent litigation, to the Ninth Circuit. Consider what’s likely to be her difficult confirmation a preview to the politically divisive process of getting Justice Scalia’s replacement a meeting before the Senate. [San Jose Mercury News]

* Of the current justices, Elena Kagan is the only one who has experienced the fallout of an eight-member Supreme Court. She clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall when there was an almost eight-month vacancy on the Court, and may have learned how to avoid 4-4 decisions from Chief Justice William Rehnquist. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg]

* Apple wants to vacate an order compelling the tech giant to help the FBI unlock one of the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhones, noting “[i]f this order is permitted to stand, it will only be a matter of days before some other prosecutor, in some other important case, before some other judge, seeks a similar order using this case as precedent.” [The Hill]

* Johnson & Johnson may have suffered a $72 million blow in its loss in a case alleging links between talcum powder and ovarian cancer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that other plaintiffs will come away from their talc-cancer cases with windfalls quite as large. They’ll still have to convince a jury that J&J’s products caused their illness. [Reuters]

* Earlier this week, Justice Elena Kagan went back to the law school she used to call her home to discuss statutory interpretation. It seems the former Harvard Law School dean fancies herself a “textualist” these days, just like her hunting buddy. Gee, thanks for that, Justice Scalia. [Harvard Crimson]

* A recent graduate of Appalachian School of Law with an affinity for criminal law has been accused of murder after shooting his uncle’s girlfriend in the chest and killing her. He waived his preliminary hearing, and the charges he’s facing will now go straight to a grand jury. [WV MetroNews]

* As Election 2016 inches closer, Biglaw firms are beginning to show their political stripes. Paul Weiss is holding a big old fundraiser for Hillary Clinton tonight. Look out, big spenders, because tickets for this event cost $2,700 each. [Washington Free Beacon]

* After nearly three decades as chairman, Gary LeClair of LeClairRyan is stepping down and letting someone else take over — three someone elses, to be precise. The firm’s leadership structure is changing completely. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* A senior analyst at BrownGreer was the recent victim of a carjacking. He was forced by his assailant to lead police on a chase, and was later shot in the head. He was last listed as being in critical, but stable condition. We wish him well. [Richmond Times-Dispatch]