Interpreting the Alabama Workplace Violence Against Murderers: The Supreme Court Shuts Down the Power of Higher-Century Laws

Editor’s Note: Steve Vladeck is a CNN legal analyst and a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. He is an author of the upcoming book, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court UsesStealthy Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court cleared the way last week for Alabama to execute Alan Miller, who killed three men in a 1999 workplace rampage. The court ruling came three hours before the death warrant was set to expire. Miller was scheduled to be put to death before midnight but prison officials couldn’t access his vein to administer the lethal injection.

The justices have granted an emergency request by a state three times in less than a year.

But whatever one thinks of the underlying merits in each of these cases, it ought not to be a controversial proposition that, when the Supreme Court acts in a way that upsets the status quo – clearing the way for an execution that lower courts had blocked, staying a lower court ruling that had blocked a state from using an unlawful congressional district map, blocking state Covid-19 restrictions that were challenged on religious liberty grounds – it owes an explanation, not just to the parties who are directly affected by the justices’ action, but to the lower courts whose own (often exhaustive) efforts were thus put to naught and to the public at large.

The Thursday ruling was, unfortunately, not an outlier. The justices often rely on unsigned and unexplained orders from their “shadow docket” to grant emergency relief, including whether to clear the way for executions or to block state Covid-19 restrictions.

The state believed it could use its lethal injection protocol if it had a record of receiving the form. The District Court, after conducting an evidentiary hearing, found that it was “substantially likely” that Miller had in fact submitted the form, and that the state had simply misplaced it.

A factual finding like that can only be overturned on appeal if the appellate court concludes that it was clearly incorrect. The trial court is entitled to deference according to the idea. The lower court has had the chance to listen to and assess witnesses, giving it a better idea of how credible they are.

No one disputes that the Supreme Court has the power to overturn a lower court’s conclusions, whether as to law or fact. The problem is the impression that the justices leave when lower courts have gone to great lengths to explain and defend their rulings, and, as in Miller’s case, the court overrides them summarily. The court at least appears to be acting for political reasons rather than legal ones.

Consider the justices summary ruling in June when they ruled in a case regarding congressional districts in Louisiana. A federal judge ruled in favor of black Louisianans, who claimed that the district maps adopted by the Louisiana Legislature violated the Voting Rights Act. The District Court ordered the Legislature to try again, specifically concluding that there was plenty of time to draw lawful maps before the 2022 midterm cycle.

There is no serious argument to be made that the Supreme Court should be required to explain all its actions. The justices receive more than 5,000 appeals every year and quite obviously can’t provide a detailed explanation of their decision not to take up most of those cases. One might even defend the practice of not typically providing an explanation when denying a request for emergency relief, including when a death row inmate asks the justices to block an execution that lower courts have allowed to go forward.

For most of the court’s history, it was difficult to predict how a case would turn out based on the party of the president who nominated the justices. In the 21st century, the court rulings remained largely in line with the views of the average American voter. That is no longer the case. The court’s rulings are now in line with the views of the average Republican voter.

When courts are seen as extensions of the political process, people will see them as trying to impose personal preferences on a society.

As the dissent in Dobbs noted: “The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them. The majority undermines the rule of law by substituting a rule by judges.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday will mark 100 days since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court with the second meeting of the administration’s Task Force on Reproductive Health Care Access.

The President and vice president are set to announce two additional steps toward boosting abortion protections at the meeting, which is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET. White House Gender Policy Council director Jen Klein said in a 100-day report obtained by CNN that the moves build on existing efforts toward protecting reproductive health care at the federal level, including executive actions announced over the summer.

The Department of Education is releasing guidance for universities reiterating the Title IX requirement that institutions protect students from discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, including pregnancy termination, Klein said.

And the Department of Health and Human Services is announcing more than $6 million in Title X grants to “protect and expand access to reproductive health care and improve service delivery, promote the adoption of healthy behaviors, and reduce existing health disparities.”

Klein renewed calls for Congress to pass legislation to codify the protections established in Roe as she lambasted “extreme steps” from Republican elected officials at the state and national level, pointing to proposed abortion ban legislation from Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other moves at the state level, including abortion bans in effect in more than a dozen states affecting nearly 30 million women of reproductive age.

“The result is that in 100 days, millions of women cannot access critical health care and doctors and nurses are facing criminal penalties for providing health care,” Klein warned.

A Video Review of the Suspension of the Arizona Planned Parenthood Abortion Ban and its Impact on the American Constitution and Elections

Biden and Harris will be joined by a group of people, including the Health and Human Services Secretary, education secretary, veterans affairs secretary, and office of management and budget director.

Planned Parenthood Arizona applauded the decision, saying that “while today’s order brings temporary respite” to state residents, there is still an “ongoing threat of this extreme, near-total abortion ban.”

On Friday, Judge Peter Eckerstrom wrote in the order that “Arizona courts have a responsibility to attempt to harmonize all of this state’s relevant statutes.”

“The court further concludes the balance of hardships weigh strongly in favor of granting the stay, given the acute need of healthcare providers, prosecuting agencies, and the public for legal clarity as to the application of our criminal laws,” the order stated.

Brittni Thomason, a spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, said in a statement following the ruling that “our office understands this is an emotional issue, and we will carefully review the court’s ruling before determining the next step.”

“We are working diligently already to resume abortion care in the Tuscon area, and unfortunately with such a big operation as Planned Parenthood, as the biggest abortion provider in the state, resuming care isn’t as easy as flipping on a light switch,” Fonteno said.

The law was temporarily suspended in Ohio so that it would not be thrown out next week. While the court case continues, there is more certainty for abortion providers and women due to the suspension of the abortion ban.

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There is a classic VUCA moment in the Ukraine war. So is Tuesday’s midterm election in the US. It is not clear what the outcome of the vote for the House and more than a third of the Senate will be.

Will it be a verdict on the leadership of President Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress? Will it strengthen or weaken the election denialism that many Republicans adopted after President Donald Trump declined to concede? How would GOP control of one or both chambers of Congress shape America’s future and the final two years of Biden’s term?

Even though the election is being fought over some issues, the two parties are not on the same page. Republicans are stressing inflation, crime and immigration in their campaigns, while many Democrats see threats to democracy and the overturning of Roe v. Wade as key reasons to elect their candidates.

Republicans think they have the momentum in their effort to recapture control of the House and Senate, argued Alice Stewart, “because they have listened to voters, heard their concerns, and offered solutions. Democrats have been tone deaf when it comes to the real issues impacting Americans, choosing to focus on threats to democracy over everyday concerns about the cost of groceries and gas. This election is about the basic need to feed families, rather than fanning fears of a fallen democracy.”

Democrats think their warnings about the future of democracy are amply justified. “We all understand inflation is temporary but losing our democracy could be permanent,” wrote Dean Obeidallah. He cited the Washington Post’s recent report that many of the GOP nominees on the 2020 ballot denied or questioned the results of the election. We have never seen anything like this before in the history of the United States.

Campaigning for Democrats, former President Barack Obama talked about inflation: “Republicans are having a field day running ads talking about it, but what is their actual solution to it?” But, in Dean Obeidallah’s view, Obama had a more effective message for turning out Democrats.

“Battles over inflation — what’s the cause, who is to blame, what is there to do — get to basic fights over who should have what. Should corporations earn bigger profits, should workers earn higher wages and should consumers shoulder the burden of both?”

Rising energy prices are “being felt particularly by lower-income households and workers,” wrote Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

The American Enterprise Institute warns of an “unnecessarily painful recession” on the horizon. The reason: the “unusually rapid pace of monetary policy tightening” by the Federal Reserve Bank, which this week hiked interest rates by three quarters of a point for the fourth time in a row. He argued that higher rates are putting pressure on companies to cut staff and slowing the housing market. “The Fed’s hawkish policy stance is occurring in the context of a very troubled world economy that has also been plagued by high inflation.” The Fed’s leaders have signaled that they may start moderating the pace of interest rate hikes.

Midterms Are Vuca Elections: My Election Tool for Detecting Biden in the Presider’s Closing Argument

Obama served up the perfect final question for the voters: who will fight for your freedom? Obeidallah observed, “The answer clearly is the Democratic Party, and the former President delivered that message, pointing to threats to reproductive rights and same-sex marriage by some Republicans.”

Thiessen wrote in the Washington Post that having Obama make the closing argument might not be a good idea. Even though it can be pleasant, Obama has a poor record of helping down-ballot Democrats. More than any president in U.S. history, Obama presided over the loss of House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats. It is not surprising that many Democrats don’t want Biden to join them on the campaign trail. They hope that Obama will be the one to save them. Based on his disastrous record, he could be an electoral liability.

A note to our readers: On Tuesday, pivotal races will decide who controls the House, Senate and dozens of governorships across the country. You can follow the contests that matter to you and build a custom dashboard with CNN’s My Election tool. You’ll need to log in or create a CNN account.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Do we care about the Capitol Insurrection? Paul Pelosi, the Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, and the Congressman Joshua Douglas

Former Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, who was injured in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, wrote, “When I speak privately with fellow officers who defended the US Capitol on January 6, the conversation often turns to why so many Americans remain indifferent about the insurrection. Most Americans don’t seem to care. An overt attempt to end our democracy? I think it’s ok…

I believe that the attack on Paul Pelosi will be a turning point but somehow I don’t think so. We are no longer talking about isolated incidents or universal condemnation of violence by our leaders. The husband of the third placed candidate for the US presidency was beaten in his home for political reasons and right wing media and some Republicans were happy about it.

Republicans, meanwhile, are primarily focusing on voters’ concerns about the economy, inflation, and crime. They’re trying to distance themselves from some of the strictest abortion restrictions that took effect this summer.

Roughly three-quarters of the states have initiatives up for a vote. “Democracy itself is on the ballot in 2022,” wrote Joshua A. Douglas. It’s not the only reason we have candidates who are questioning the election or who refuse to promise defeat this year, but a number of states and localities will also vote on measures to change how elections are run.

Midterms Are Vuca Elections: What Do They Tell Us About Their Party? Observations of Julian Zelizer on the 2016 midterms

Friday brought word that former President Donald Trump could announce that he is launching another bid for the White House in the next few weeks. “Democrats should not underestimate the threat that Trump poses,” observed Julian Zelizer.

“The Republicans remain a strongly united party. Very little can shake that unity. … the ‘Never Trump’ contingent failed to emerge as a dominant force. Liz Cheney, an official of the party, was removed from the party.

If Republicans do well next week and take control of the Senate and House, they’ll be able to focus on their culture wars and talking points for the next several years. And given the number of election-denying candidates in the midterms, a strong showing will likely create the tailwinds for the GOP to unite behind Trump.”

Trump himself will feel emboldened, Zelizer wrote. Despite the criminal investigations and the House committee investigating January 6, Trump is still a viable political figure. … And once Trump is formally a candidate, it will make prosecuting him all the more difficult. Trump will claim that the investigation is politically motivated and intended to take him out of the running.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The Rise and Fall of the Left: Elon Musk’s First Few Days on Twitter, His Failure to Reverse the Twitter Ban, and his Possible Implications for the Future of Twitter

“The chorus of outrage about West’s disgusting attack on Jews was for many days muted – even factoring in the businesses that severed relationships with him,” Carter wrote. “Some underplayed the impact of someone as big and famous as Kanye West diving into the ugliness of bias, despite the fact that there already has been a sustained surge of antisemitic comments in alt-right online communities.”

Elon Musk’s first few days of controlling Twitter have been tumultuous, with the Tesla CEO spreading misinformation, laying off a large share of the workforce and sharing the idea of charging users for blue-check verification status.

“Musk is making the remarkable power that US tech executives hold over our lives, from geopolitics to the health of democracy, painfully tangible to all,” wrote Marietje Schaake in the Financial Times.

“Immediately after the sale was confirmed, the number of neo-Nazi and racist tweets exploded on the site. Accounts marked as being linked to Russian and Chinese state media requested that the Twitter labels indicating as much be removed. There was a lot of chatter about whether Musk would reverse the account ban for extremists, conspiracy theorists or Donald Trump.

Musk “has placed no limits on his own speech,” wrote former advertising executive Rob Norman in the New York Times, “and, under his ownership, seems likely to enable the inflammatory, provocative and sometimes verifiably untrue speech of others.”

“I know from having represented the world’s biggest buyer of advertising space that advertisers worry about these things a lot. In this case, advertisers’ worries could lead them to flee en masse, costing Twitter almost all its current revenue. The future of the platform could be at risk without that revenue, as it could be calamitous for Mr. Musk to acquire it.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

The Case for Moving America’s Schools Forward: The 2021-2020 Girl Who Railed Against Gender Queer, Lawn Boy, and Banned Books Week

Martha Hickson, a high school librarian in New Jersey for more than a decade, called it the worst year of her working life. In 2021, protesters showed up at a school board meeting and “railed against ‘Gender Queer,’ a memoir in graphic novel form by Maia Kobabe, and ‘Lawn Boy,’ a coming-of-age novel by Jonathan Evison. They showed some sentences from the book, while showing some isolated images from the others.

“Next, they attacked Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. The protesters characterized it as a nefarious plot to lure kids to degradation,” wrote Hickson.

“But the real sucker punch came when one protester branded me a pedophile, pornographer and groomer of children. After a successful career, with retirement on the horizon, to be cast as a villain was heartbreaking.”

I found the response from my employer even worse. The board did not speak a word in my defense for the next five months.

CNN Opinion put on a series of essays on the topics of “America’s future starts now.” The concluding piece was written by one of the authors. Nine experts weighed in on the topic of moving America’s schools forward.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Midterms are Vuca Elections: A Column-Galant Perspective on the Past, Present, and Future of Israel in the Presence of the Israeli Military

People returned to familiar faces after elections in the Middle East and Latin America. The former Brazilian President Silva posted a stunning political comeback, defeating the incumbent, Arick said.

“Not since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s have Brazilians been faced with two more starkly contrasting candidates, each with diametrically opposing political outlooks for the country,” Wierson wrote. And “it’s clear that a sizable percentage of the voting population didn’t buy into either of their visions for the country.”

“Even under indictment and on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Netanyahu is still the most consequential politician on the Israeli scene today,” wrote Aaron David Miller. “For Netanyahu this election was truly existential. Had he failed to secure a governing majority, he might have had to face the consequences of a guilty verdict or plea bargain that would have driven him away from politics.

The most stable and durable political party in Israel is Likud. Israel is now shaped by the right wing, and perhaps its most extreme elements, unlike at any point in its history.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/opinions/midterms-are-vuca-election-opinion-column-galant/index.html

Marital Dilemma: Why Do U.S. Court Decisions Matter to Families? The Case of Brady and Bündchen

This isn’t only about the couple, Filipovic made clear. “Celebrities wind up as avatars for our own desires, jealousies, ambitions, and insecurities. We don’t actually know why Bündchen and Brady are splitting,” but the story could “tell us a little bit about their marriage – and a whole lot about the still-unfinished business of equality in American marriages.”

“Bündchen’s public comments indicate a worry about Brady’s health playing a dangerous sport and a desire – after years of sacrificing so that he could thrive professionally – for him to spend more time with their family.”

This is a common and frustrating situation: the woman who has to step back to care for her husband and children, and the husband who can’t seem to appreciate that sacrifice and pushes professionally more than he needs to.

The question for Democrats — who are in a historically unfavorable position as the party in charge of the White House and facing growing concerns about inflation and the rest of the economy — is to what degree the energy unleashed by this summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade can be harnessed at the polls, and to what extent that energy can overcome voters’ economic worries.

Supporters of abortion rights saw a major and largely unforeseen victory in Kansas in August when voters in the red state resoundingly rejected a ballot initiative that would have added language stating that the state constitution contains no protections for abortion rights. The decision was released about six weeks later.

Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of government affairs at SBA Pro-Life America, said without a nationwide abortion ban, people will continue to travel from states with restrictions to those with more liberal abortion laws.

President Biden has promised he would veto any such anti-abortion legislation that might pass while he’s in office, but NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju said that would be too close for comfort.

Do abortion rights matter? What do we want to see in the next election? An open debate about the case of the U.S. Supreme Court

We don’t want it to go that far. Timmaraju said that it was a bad precedent. “We’re absolutely not going to let it get to that point; that’s our goal.”

Emily’s Listpresident, Ms. AnnetteButler, thinks that abortion rights will be top of mind for voters in the election and she thinks that may be a problem for Democrats.

“Voters are whole people; they carry their whole selves into the ballot box,” Butler said. “And what we have experienced as a nation is that our economy ebbs and flows – but once our fundamental freedoms are taken away, we don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to get that back.”

To that end, a coalition of national abortion rights groups is spending $150 million toward this campaign season, along with hundreds of millions more in abortion-focused ads from Democratic candidates themselves.

Meanwhile, SBA Pro-Life America’s Musgrave says the group’s Women Speak Out Pac has contacted some 8 million voters nationwide on behalf of anti-abortion rights candidates and related ballot measures.

The author of the book Dollars for Life: The Anti-AbortionMovement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment is a professor at the University of California, Davis. The views she expresses are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

It is possible that Dobbs is the biggest wild card. Not what the decision said – that has been baked in since May, when a draft leaked from the court and then went fundamentally unchanged before the Supreme Court reversed Roe in June. What we do know is that it will be interesting to read what will happen in the lives of Americans.

Voters were reacting to what the Supreme Court did. There is no real precedent for the court to destroy what was long recognized as a constitutional right – much less to do so in a way that was mocking and dismissive. In his opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito observed that more than half the electorate was female. He suggested that if people didn’t like what the court did, they could go out and vote. Voters were swayed by Alito last night.

Trigger laws that banned abortion, most without exceptions for rape or incest, were implemented in a number of states. Laws made it harder for physicians to defend themselves in medical emergencies and made it harder for prosecutors to prove they needed to save a patient’s life.

Legislators want to go even further. In Texas, legislators have threatened the CEOs of major corporations with felony charges for reimbursing their employees for traveling out of state for abortion. The Idaho Republican platform does not allow exceptions for abortion.

And those are just the concrete consequences. But Americans’ reactions to Roe v. Wade over the past five decades were about much more than what the Supreme Court said in 1973. For a number of movements and individual Americans, Roe became a symbol for reproductive justice, for women’s equality and for judicial overreaching.

The 2021 abortion ban in South Carolina has been violated by the judiciary for too long: a dissent from the governor and the White House

The 2021 law had banned abortions once ​what it called a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, which can be as early as ​four weeks, and more commonly, six weeks ​into pregnancy, with exceptions for ​fetal anomalies, risk to the life of the mother​, or in ​some cases of rape or incest. ​

While the state can impose some limits on those rights, Hearn wrote, “any such limitation must be reasonable and it must be meaningful in that the time frames imposed must afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and to take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy.”

In a dissent penned by Justice John Kittredge and joined in part by Justice George James, Kittredge wrote that he “would honor the policy decision made by the General Assembly,” adding that the issue of determining abortion policy in the state rests with its elected lawmakers.

South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster blasted the ruling on Thursday, writing in a statement that the court “has found a right in our Constitution which was never intended by the people of South Carolina.”

“With this opinion, the court has clearly exceeded its authority. The people have spoken with their elected representatives multiple times on this issue. The governor said he would work with the Assembly to correct the error.

The decision, however, was applauded by the White House, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre writing in a tweet that the Biden administration is “encouraged by South Carolina’s Supreme Court ruling today on the state’s extreme and dangerous abortion ban.”

The six-week prohibition on the procedure violates several clauses of South Carolinas constitution, as well as being a violation of the rights of patients, as evidenced by the lawsuit filed by the two providers.