Thursday round-up

By Edith Roberts
on Sep 8, 2016 at 9:41 am

In The Washington Post, Robert Barnes reports on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s remarks before an audience of incoming law students, in which she stated that “senators refusing to vote on President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court should recognize a president is elected for four years not three. . . ‘I do think cooler heads will prevail, I hope sooner rather than later,’ Ginsburg said.” Additional coverage of Justice Ginsburg’s remarks comes from Sam Hananel at AP and Lawrence Hurley at Reuters. In the QuadCity Times, Erin Murphy reports on the results of an Iowa poll showing that a majority of Iowa voters believe that the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who is up for re-election in November, should hold confirmation hearings on the nomination of Judge Garland. In Bloomberg Politics, Greg Stohr discusses Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to indicate whether she would re-nominate Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court if she wins in November and he remains unconfirmed when she takes office, noting that “Clinton’s decision would shape both the direction of the court and tone of her presidency.”

Briefly:

• Sam Hananel reports for AP that “Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday temporarily blocked a congressional subpoena that seeks information on how the classified advertising website Backpage.com screens ads for possible sex trafficking.”
• At the National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent announcement that she will speak next February at the Virginia Military Institute, the formerly all-male academy forced to admit women under Ginsburg’s majority opinion in United States v. Virginia.
• In a Bloomberg BNA podcast, Kimberly Robinson and Nicholas Datlowe examine the history of redistricting and take a look at the redistricting cases before the Supreme Court this Term.
• In The Wall Street Journal, Jess Bravin discusses the Justice Department’s effort to strengthen its case in Jennings v. Rodriguez, which involves the government’s power to detain aliens without bail while their immigration cases are pending, “by introducing new information at the final stage of litigation, even though the government was recently forced to apologize for erroneous information provided in this way.”
• At the ICMA’s Knowledge Network blog, Lisa Soronen previews the upcoming Term’s cases that relate to local governments; at the Council of State Governments’ Knowledge Center blog, she highlights the docket’s implications for the states.