#SCOTUS Audio is working now.

Chief Justice #JohnRoberts opened Thursday’s session with a lengthy tribute to former justice #DavidSouter, who died last
week.

Up first is Solicitor General D. John Sauer, representing the #Trump admin.

As expected he’s arguing the power of the #judiciary to issue nationwide injunctions.

#law #immigration #Constitution #AbuseOfPower

[Not from the NYT article, still my #DavidSouter 🧵]

#Souter planned his retirement from #SCOTUS to occur during a Democratic presidency as he was keenly aware of Republican designs on turning the court into a political arm.

NPR 2009:
Factors in his decision no doubt include the election of President #Obama, who would be more likely to appoint a successor attuned to the principles Souter has followed as a moderate-to-liberal member of the court's more liberal bloc over the past 2 decades.

#law

In one late June #HabeasCorpus ruling, …3 contentious #Scalia footnotes criticized Souter by name; 3 days later, in one of the term's leading cases, …Scalia in angry dissent dismissed #DavidSouter's majority opinion as "facile" & petulantly invoked Souter's name again & again in criticizing the outcome. Seemingly both provoked & bemused, Souter responded that "Justice Scalia's dissent is certainly the work of a gladiator, but he thrusts at lions of his own imagining."

#SCOTUS #law #judiciary

…the most dramatic 1993-94 evidence of #DavidSouter's increasingly influential intellectual leadership of the Court's 6 mainstream members was the growing number of combative references that #AntoninScalia was directing to him in multiple opinions. #SCOTUS insiders emphasize that in person, the 2 justices "like each other,” …but based upon the written record, there is little doubt that Scalia now realizes…that he has decisively lost the struggle for #intellectual leadership of the Court….

#law

But in the following year, as Kennedy reverted to greater agreement w/the Chief Justice, #Souter found himself on the minority side of far more split decisions.

…The 1992-93 decline of the Souter-O'Connor-Kennedy trio led some observers to highlight how Kennedy had moved back rightward, but Paul Barrett of WSJ contended that actually the "most striking development" was Souter's "emerging #liberal streak."

#DavidSouter #SCOTUS #law #judiciary #JudicialIndependence #ethics

…[A] close friend, echoing how Casey "wasn't a surprise," especially given "David's respect for #precedent," stressed that people did not appreciate how "David's a #judicial conservative, NOT a #political conservative.”…

Neither the 1992-93 or 1993-94 terms would prove as significant as 1991-92. The most striking statistic of 1991-92, as Casey exemplified, was the degree to which Anthony Kennedy had shifted away from Rehnquist & toward #Souter & O'Connor.

#DavidSouter #SCOTUS #law #judiciary