Chief Justice John Roberts released an impassioned Year End Report on December 31, 2019, which generated much commentary. The New York Times, for instance wrote about the Chief Justice’s calls for an independent federal judiciary. The Wall Street Journal examined Justice Roberts’ warnings against rumor and false information. These values inherent in the Chief’s report…
Tag: New York Times
Forced Judicial Restraint
When, soon after his nomination to the Supreme Court, Judge Garland was praised for his judicial restraint, this praise was not envisioned for the type of impact Judge Garland’s nomination has made on the Court so far. Similarly, no one calling for judicial restraint or decrying the Court’s judicial activism prior to 2016 expected change to come in…
The Three Shifts of Chief Justice John Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts’ resume is not remarkably unique for a Supreme Court Justice. That is not to say that it is not impressive. There is scant evidence of an imperfection from his Harvard undergrad and law school education, appellate and Supreme Court clerkships, work in the Solicitor General’s Office, big firm law practice, and…
Has The Supreme Court Turned a Liberal Tide?
The pieces are in place. With Justice Scalia’s death the liberals on the Court (both ideologically speaking and by virtue of their appointments by Democratic Presidents) are matched evenly with the Court’s conservatives for the first time in almost half a century. The last time a majority of Justices appointed by democrats sat on the…
The Biggest Supreme Court Cases of the Term
This Term the Supreme Court decided to tackle cases dealing with a variety of hot-button issues ranging from the right to an abortion (or more specifically the right for who can provide an abortion) to the meaning of “one person, one vote.” These issues affect a profound portion of the American populace. Correspondingly these cases often make headlines,…
Analyzing News Coverage of Merrick Garland’s Nomination
(image from NPR) With the help of a nifty tool piece of software that performs topic modeling, I distilled some of the major themes that appeared in national and local news covering the Garland nomination in print and online (this include several articles from some of the most widely read papers, e.g. New York Times…
empiricalscotus.com 