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 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…