The Supreme Court will hear a slate of highly charged disputes when the justices return to the bench in the new year and resume one of the most politically volatile terms in recent memory, reports The Hill.

The court already has heard high-profile fights over LGBT rights in the workplace, the scope of the Second Amendment and the deportation status of nearly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants. But the remaining cases on the court’s docket are no less explosive, write The Hill‘s John Kruzel and Harper Neidig.

The top seven cases to be heard this session involve a separation of powers fight over President Trump’s financial records, Louisiana’s abortion law, religious school scholarships, religious exemptions from discrimination suits, the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a fight over how copyright law treats software interfaces, and Bridgegate and public corruption.

Read the Hill article.

Legal cases concerning President Trump, his finances and his separation-of-powers disputes with Congress are arriving at the Supreme Court, and together provide both potential and challenge for the Roberts court in its aspiration to be seen as nonpartisan, reports The Washington Post.

On Dec. 13, the court will consider whether to schedule a full briefing and argument on the president’s request that it overturn a lower-court ruling giving New York prosecutors access to Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.

Authors Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow quote Walter Dellinger, who argued for President Bill Clinton before the Supreme Court:

“This will be a special moment for the independence of the judiciary and whether the hyperpartisanship that has infected so much of our culture has also infiltrated the Supreme Court.”

Read the  Post article.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins said she plans to oppose the nomination of Sarah Pitlyk to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, citing her lack of experience, “troubling assertions” on therapies for family struggling with infertility, and stance on abortion, reports Bloomberg Law.

“Her nomination narrowly cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee after Democrats criticized her advocacy work. She was also considered “Not Qualified” by the American Bar Association,” according to Bloomberg’s Madison Alder.

Collins’ opposition alone, however, won’t be enough for Democrats to sink Pitlyk’s nomination in the full Senate.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to side with the Trump administration in its effort to end a program that lets nearly 700,000 young, undocumented immigrants live and work in the USA without fear of deportation, according to a USA Today report.

Several conservative justices noted the Department of Homeland Security laid out several reasons for its decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

The court’s four liberal justices argued that the decision to end DACA should rise or fall on the administration’s tenuous claim that it was illegal.

“Chief Justice John Roberts looked to be the key vote, as he was in June when he voted with the court’s four liberal justices to strike down the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census,” USA Today‘s Richard Wolf writes.

Read the USA Today article.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts cemented his new role as the Supreme Court’s swing vote, angering people on the political left and right in the process, as he decided the outcomes of major rulings on the census and electoral map manipulation, according to a Reuters report.

In two 5-4 votes, Roberts sided with his fellow conservative justices in rejecting challenges to a practice called partisan gerrymandering but joined the court’s liberals in dealing to a damaging blow to President Trump’s plan to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The votes illustrate how Roberts now is the court’s center, a role he inherited following the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writes Reuters’ Lawrence Hurley.

But seeing a chief justice taking the middle road hasn’t gone down well with some “deeply disappointed right-leaning lawyers and pundits who had been counting on near-certain victory from a court now stocked with a pair of Trump-appointed justices handpicked by conservative legal activists,” according to a Politico report.

Read the Reuters article.

For the first time in John Roberts’ 14 years as chief justice of the United States, he will likely be the deciding vote on several final, tense cases — a total of 24 over the next two weeks, according to CNN.

“Two of the most politically charged cases awaiting resolution, testing 2020 census questions and partisan gerrymanders, could lead to decisions favoring Republican Party interests and reinforce the partisan character of a court comprising five GOP appointees and four Democratic ones,” writes CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

Read the CNN article.

For the second time in as many weeks, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has sided with liberal Supreme Court justices to disagree with how lower courts have interpreted Supreme Court precedent, reports The Washington Post.

“On Tuesday, Roberts was pointed in saying the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ‘misapplied’ a 2017 ruling that instructed that court to reconsider its analysis of whether death-row inmate Bobby James Moore was intellectually disabled, and thus ineligible for execution.” writes the Post‘s Robert Barnes.

And less than two weeks ago Roberts joined in blocking a Louisiana law that tightened restrictions on abortion providers.

Read the Post article.

A Bloomberg columnist sees seven leading contenders for President Donald Trump to consider for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, should the need arise.

“The four candidates under most serious consideration are all appeals-courts judges who were placed on the bench by Trump,” writes opinion columnist Ramesh Ponnuru.

Among the prospects is Amy Coney Barrett, whose confirmation to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals became a national news story in September 2017 when Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and a few other critics made an issue of the nominee’s religious views.

The list of seven contenders also includes two judges who were considered for previous Supreme Court vacancies.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Justice Neil Gorsuch

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a long-haul truck driver who sued his employer for failing to pay him a minimum wage, handing down a decision that could have broad ramifications on the transportation sector and the economy as a whole, reports CNBC.

CNBC reporter Tucker Higgins explains:

“In an opinion delivered for a unanimous court, Justice Neil Gorsuch held that courts must decide whether an exception in the Federal Arbitration Act, or FAA, for transportation workers applies before requiring arbitration. And, he wrote, that exception applies not just to traditional employees but also to independent contractors.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had urged the court to rule in favor of the employer.

Read the CNBC article.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh

CNN reports that a U.S. judicial council on Tuesday dismissed 83 complaints that had been lodged against new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, arising largely from statements he made during his contentious September confirmation hearings.

“In a 10-page order, the judicial council of a Denver-based US appeals court said the complaints — the first of which were referred to the court by Chief Justice John Roberts on October 10 — could not be acted on because Kavanaugh, as a justice, is no longer covered by the judiciary’s misconduct rules,” explains CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

“The allegations contained in the complaints are serious,” the order noted, “but the Judicial Council is obligated to adhere to the Act. Lacking statutory authority to do anything more, the complaints must be dismissed because an intervening event — Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court — has made the complaints no longer appropriate for consideration under the Act.”

Read the CNN article.

CBS News reports that a federal judge nominee who the American Bar Association deemed “not qualified” for the bench has become the first in U.S. history to be confirmed by the Senate with a tie-breaking vote from the vice president.

Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote in favor of Jonathan Kobes after senators split 50-50 on his confirmation to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Kobes is a lawyer from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The American Bar Association gave Kobes a “not qualified” rating, saying he had shown “neither the requisite experience nor evidence of his ability to fulfill the scholarly writing required of a United States Circuit Court Judge.”

Read the CBS News article.

A new study by Above the Law takes a unique approach to ranking the influence and impact of justices of the U.S. Supreme Court by rating them based on the career success of their former clerks.

“Today’s Supreme Court clerks are tomorrow’s Supreme Court justices. They are tomorrow’s attorneys general and United States attorneys.” explains executive editor Elie Mystal. “They are tomorrow’s law professors and corporate GCs. Former Supreme Court clerks are incredibly powerful people in their own right, and they received their final training from a Supreme Court justice.”

The study covers former justices as well as current members of the court. That’s why, for example, Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and the late Thurgood Marshall score high in the rankings. The study focuses on four categories: the judiciary, Biglaw, academia and government.

Read the Above the Law article.

The GOP’s bid to transform the federal bench with conservative judges hit its first significant snag Thursday as the White House withdrew the nomination of Ryan Bounds to serve on the powerful and famously liberal 9th Circuit appeals court, reports The Washington Post.

After an hour-long delay on the vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the nomination had been withdrawn. Two Republican senators planned to vote against the confirmation.

“The nomination drew widespread criticism over articles Bounds wrote in the Stanford Review as an undergraduate that ridiculed multiculturalism and groups concerned with racial issues,” writes Karoun Demirjian. “Bounds attempted to apologize for those writings earlier this year, but his apology — which focused more on his rhetoric than his views — failed to convince Democrats or satisfy all Republicans.”

Read the Post article.

By SPDuffy527 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Some senators considering Kethledge’s 2008 nomination questioned his lack of judicial experience, but now he’s on Trump’s list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly Feb. 13.

“Kethledge’s notable opinions at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit include a ruling in favor of a Tea Party group and against the Internal Revenue Service,” writes reporter Patrick Gregory. “The judge has written that he likes to see candidness and civility in appellate briefs.”

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Paul Barrett and Allison Hoffman of BloombergBusinessweek list some of the top issues that will be waiting for a new U.S. Supreme Court justice who is likely to nominated by Donald Trump after he moves into the White House in 2017.

The new justice will fill the seat formerly held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who led 5-4 corporate majorities in a series of major rulings.

The authors discuss the top five issues, which include climate change, arbitration, class actions, property rights and insider trading.

Read the BloombergBusinessweek article.

Sri Srinavasan meets all the criteria on Empirical SCOTUS’ list for USSC nominees.

Empirical SCOTUS takes a look at the leading prospects who may be on the list of possible nominees for a Hillary Clinton selection for the U.S. Supreme Court — assuming she ends up in the White House and Donald Trump doesn’t.

Adam Feldman points out that his speculation also assumes that Obama nominee Merrick Garland will not be confirmed by the Senate in a lame-duck session.

All judges on the list aside from Garland are less than 60 years of age. The other criteria were that they had an initial ABA Qualifications rating of “well qualified” and the judge must have gone to a top-five ranked law school.

Feldman singles out Sri Srinivasan of the DC Circuit as the only judge to meet all of the list’s criteria. The India-born Stanford graduate worked in the Office of the Solicitor General, is ranked “highly qualified” and is 49 years old.

Read the article.

Bloomberg Law takes a look at prospects for the U.S. Supreme Court if Hillary Clinton is elected president, considering that she may have have the opportunity to offer one or more nominations to seats on the court.

“A left-leaning court with at least one appointment from potential President Hillary Clinton would mean a big shift in areas of the law such as voting rights and gun control, but panelists making predictions at the American Bar Association annual meeting doubted the new court would overturn major precedents,” reports Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson.

She writes that professors on the panel believe the new court is unlikely to outright overrule some of the court’s more controversial precedents. But while the new court is unlikely to overrule precedent on cases involving voters’ rights, handgun regulation, and campaign finance, there still is plenty of room for a new majority to make substantive changes.

Read the article.

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a rare setback Wednesday to companies trying to avoid potentially expensive class-action lawsuits when justices ruled that offers of full compensation to the lead plaintiff in such a case do not automatically end the legal challenge, reports USA Today. The 6-3 decision was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“An unaccepted settlement offer, like other unaccepted contract offers, creates no lasting right or obligation,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 6-3 opinion. “Once unaccepted, the offer is off the table.”

“The case was among several on the court’s docket this term that could lead to more or fewer class-action lawsuits,” the report says.

Read the article.