Justice Ginsburg’s remarks in her most recent interviews (which I covered in yesterday’s round-up) have prompted a new round of coverage and commentary. At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick compares those remarks with Justice Scalia’s comments last week in Montana (which I covered in Tuesday’s round-up). Describing the two as “the most famous legal frenemies of their time,” she suggests that they “are the last two sitting justices who are so completely of another era—in each case an era whose legal hopes were never fully realized. No wonder they’re both feeling so frustrated. And no wonder they’re both so willing to say it so loudly.” At ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser uses the remarks as a jumping-off point from which to compare the Roberts Court to the Lochner Court.
In The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen discusses the lawsuit that the federal government filed last week in Texas to challenge that state’s voter identification law. (Lyle reported on the lawsuit for this blog at the time.) He contends that “[t]he post-Shelby County world has arrived, not with a quick Congressional fix to restore key voting protections for minorities but with still more politically tinged litigation.” And with President Obama set to speak tomorrow on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, Doug Kendall in USA Today urges the president, in the wake of the Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, to use the occasion “as an opportunity to affirm our nation’s commitment to the promises of equality and voting rights as guaranteed by the words of the United States Constitution.”
[Disclosure: The law firm of Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in Shelby County. However, the author of this post was not involved in the case and is no longer affiliated with the firm.]
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY