SCOTUS Map: February and March 2015
on Mar 6, 2015 at 12:03 pm
February may be the shortest month of the year but the Supreme Court Justices made the most of it, tallying up thirteen appearances before reconvening in Washington, D.C., toward the end of the month for oral arguments. I covered most of February’s events in the last installment of this feature, but here are some highlights from the four February events that have taken place since the last update:
On February 10, Justice Anthony Kennedy gave a lecture on the Magna Carta to law students at the University of Miami. “It might surprise you to know that the Magna Carta is on my mind every day as I drive to work,” Kennedy said. His appearance at the university came three days after retired Justice John Paul Stevens gave the keynote at the University of Miami Law Review’s 2015 Symposium. Catharine Skipp covered both appearances for the university.
Justice Clarence Thomas sat down for a conversation about religion and public service at Yale Law School on February 12. This was Thomas’s second public appearance at his alma mater this Term. Yale has posted full video of the event online. Tony Mauro also covered the event for the Legal Times (subscription required).
On the same day, Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a self-described “odd couple” – appeared onstage together at a Smithsonian Associates event in Washington, D.C., moderated by NPR’s Nina Totenberg. Justice Ginsburg made headlines when she remarked that she had not been “100% sober” at the president’s State of the Union address, thanks to a wine that Justice Kennedy had brought to dinner beforehand. CNN’s Ariane de Vogue covered the appearance, as did Totenberg.
On February 26, Justice Scalia traveled to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to deliver the first Winthrop Paul Rockefeller lecture at the U.S. Marshals Museum. “The Constitution means what it meant when our forefathers adopted it. Of all the things ever written, why should it morph?” He said to the audience. Arkansas News provided coverage of the event, while City News highlighted Scalia’s comments on why he doesn’t perceive the Supreme Court’s lack of diversity as a problem.
Compared to February, March seems much more low-key:
Despite inclement weather shutting down most of D.C. and the rest of the Newseum, Justice Scalia and Bryan A. Garner forged ahead with their March 5 Supreme Court Fellows Program Annual Lecture at the museum, where the pair discussed their book Reading Law: Interpretation of Legal Texts.
Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is set to attend the Arizona Region of the American Jewish Committee’s annual Judge Learned Hand Awards luncheon in Phoenix on March 11. Justice O’Connor will be honored with the Public Service Award for her work in both the public and nonprofit sectors.
The following day, Justice Stephen Breyer will be in New York for a Bloomberg View Talk at the 92Y, where he will participate in a conversation titled “The Supreme Court and the Constitution in an Age of Political Partisanship” with Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman.
Finally, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is scheduled to speak at Davidson College in North Carolina on March 12. The college moved the event from a performance hall to a basketball arena after the demand for tickets exceeded the original venue’s seating capacity.
