Monthly Archives: June 2016

Supreme Court — End of Term

By tmess2 | Published June 30, 2016

The Supreme Court recessed for the summer after their last conference (the wrap-up conference) on Monday afternoon.  After the order from that conference was issued on Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court has filled twenty-nine of the thirty argument slots for the fall.  (A little below average as they normally have some carry-over for the January argument session. )

Monday featured three significant opinions — the Texas abortion case, Governor McDonnell’s corruption case, and an interesting case involving gun control and domestic violence.  These cases saw some interesting combinations of Justices as very different judicial philosophies combine to reach the same result.

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GOP unveils stage for convention

By Matt | Published June 29, 2016

The GOP released a model of the stage for their 2016 convention.

A couple of thoughts:

  1. Because it’s a model, I don’t think releasing it achieved the effect they desired. It kind of looks like a middle-school panorama project.
  2. It looks like a standard convention stage. Anyone expecting anything dramatically different for a Trump convention won’t find it here.

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Summary of Draft DNC Platform

By Matt | Published June 28, 2016

After its last meeting in St. Louis, the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee has released a summary of the 2016 platform.

This draft will now go to the full Platform Committee for final approval at a meeting in Orlando, Florida on July 8th and 9th.  The document approved by the full Platform Committee, consisting of 187 members from across the country, will be presented for ratification at the Democratic National Convention in July.

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Will anyone be speaking at GOP convention?

By Matt | Published June 27, 2016

Besides Trump and his VP?

With the convention less than a month away, POLITICO contacted more than 50 prominent governors, senators and House members to gauge their interest in speaking. Only a few said they were open to it, and everyone else said they weren’t planning on it, didn’t want to or weren’t going to Cleveland at all — or simply didn’t respond. –Politico

Among the non-attendees: Rep Trey Gowdy, Rep Mark Sanford, Rep Sean Duffy, Rep Carlos Curbelo, Sen Kelly Ayotte, Gov Bruce Rauner, Sen Lindsey Graham, Rep Elise Stefanik, Rep Richard Hudson, Rep Mia Love Continue Reading...

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Australian Election Preview (Updated 7-2-16)

By tmess2 | Published June 26, 2016

Australian politics has some similarity to the United States.  Seats in their House of Representatives are distributed by the population of the state (with each state guaranteed a certain number of seats).  The states have equal representation in their Senate (twelve senators each rather than two) and the election of senators are usually staggered (half from each state elected every three years).

This year, however, is an unusual election (scheduled for July 2).  The existence of staggered terms plus the voting system for the Senate creates the possibility that the party that controls the House will not control the Senate.  Unlike the U.S. which forces the parties to live with deadlock until the next regularly scheduled election, Australian law contains an out — the “double dissolution” election.  Normally, only the House of Representatives dissolves — either through expiration of the term or through the Prime Minister requesting an early election.  If the dissolution of the House occurs within the window for a half-Senate election (within the last year of a Senate term),  the House and half-Senate election occurs at the same time (but the new Senators do not take office — except for the Senators from the two territories — until the old term expires).

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Affirmative Action Survives — Barely

By tmess2 | Published June 25, 2016

On Thursday, in a rather surprising turn of events, the Supreme Court upheld the admission policy of the University of Texas at Austin against a complaint that it unconstitutionally favored African-Americans.  This decision is surprising both because of the outcome, but also because of who wrote the opinion.

The basics of admission at UT is that the first cut of admissions comes from the “top 10%” program.  If you go to high school in Texas and finish in the top 10% of your school and want to go to UT, you are automatically accepted (actually due to the cap on the number of admissions under this program, it is now closer to a top 7% program).  This part of the admissions process fills about 75% of the slots.  If you are home schooled, or out-of-state, or finish outside the top ten percent (whether that is 4th out of a graduation class of 30 or 150th out of a graduating class of 160), you have to compete based on a combination of your academic index (your GPA plus SAT score) and your “personal achievement index” (a score based on the admission essay, extracurricular activities, demonstrated leadership, and other factors with race being one of the other factors).    Because race can impact the personal achievement factor, a white student who did not qualify under the top 10% program challenged her failure to make it under this second admissions process, claiming that it violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment.

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We Need Nine — Immigration Edition

By tmess2 | Published June 23, 2016

It has been four months since the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  Over that four months, we have gotten some proof about how important a full Supreme Court is to a functioning court.  Today, we got more reminders.

In March, we learned that, in two cases heard before Justice Scalia’s death, the remaining eight justices were deadlocked 4-4, meaning that the decision of the lower court stood.  One of these two cases involved a First Amendment challenge to mandatory union dues for public employees.  The petitioners (the parties that lost in the lower court) in both cases have asked for rehearing, and the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to grant rehearing.  Today, we learned that two more cases had ended in a 4-4 tie.  One of the two was a December case involving the jurisdiction of tribal court.  The other (and the first deadlocked case argued after Justice Scalia’s death) was United States v. Texas — the immigration policy case.  (Additionally, today saw a decision in the Affirmative Action case which I will discuss later this weekend.)

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Britain, Europe, and the Presidential Election

By tmess2 | Published June 20, 2016

There is no constitutional mechanism for a federal referendum in the United States.  The federal government has only limited authority over elections, and that limited authority does not give the federal government the ability to put legislation to a national referendum.  That is not the case in other countries.  In recent years, the United Kingdom has put major constitutional issues to a referendum.  This Thursday will see the latest of these referendums in which the issue is whether the United Kingdom will stay in the European Union.

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Supreme Court — 2015-16 Term — Two Weeks to Go (Updated 6-20)

By tmess2 | Published June 19, 2016

While the Supreme Court does not have a hard and fast rule on when it recesses for the summer, traditionally the Supreme Court tries to issue opinions in all the outstanding cases before July 4.  As a result, the last part of June typically sees the media remembering that we have a Supreme Court as major decisions pour out of the court in a flood during this time of year.  It’s not that the Justices intentionally save the major cases until the end, but rather that these cases are the ones that are most likely to go back and forth with drafts and counter-drafts until the deadline for resolving the cases hits.

This year, there are thirteen cases left to be decided.  The Supreme Court has actually been making decent progress over the past month — having gone to two opinion days per week two weeks ago and issuing eleven opinions over the past two weeks.  While the Supreme Court will not announce additional opinion days for this week until after issuing opinions on Monday, it is likely that there will be at least one more opinion day (and maybe two more opinion days) later this week.  Of the remaining thirteen cases, three or four of them have major political implications.

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GOP finally gets access to Quicken Loans arena for 2016 convention

By Matt | Published June 17, 2016

The Cavs are gone:

“LeBron, good luck in the series,” Mr. Trump said the other day as he noted the predicament with a sense of resignation. “Of course, the longer it goes, the less time we have. But that’s O.K.”

Mr. Trump will have only four weeks to convert the sports arena into a red, white and blue-decked theater for his political ambitions. Usually, the Republican National Committee likes to allow campaigns six weeks to prepare, and at this point in 2012, Mitt Romney’s campaign had been in place in its arena for weeks. Republican officials, though, said they planned to move quickly. Continue Reading...

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