Sean Farhang (UC-Berkeley): Rights and Retrenchment in the Trump Era. The Supreme Court is an anti-democratic nightmare — here’s how to fix it. From Current Affairs, how the Supreme Court pretends to be reasonable when it’s so obviously ideological; and judging the judges: What is apparent is that judges are more concerned with law than justice and that they have far too much power to ruin peoples’ lives. Meet the big winners in Neil Gorsuch’s America: Not everyone is going to lose their rights, just the non-rich people. Little Scalia: Watching Neil Gorsuch, a mild-mannered good boy from Denver, become the second-most-polarizing man in Washington. Antonin Scalia’s disruption of the Supreme Court’s ways is here to stay.
Richard L. Hasen (UC-Irvine): Polarization and the Judiciary. Bruce Ledewitz (Duquesne): Has Nihilism Politicized the Supreme Court Nomination Process? How Supreme Court nominations lost their apolitical pretense: It used to be that nobody would admit to opposing a nominee for ideological reasons — should we be happy that illusion is over? Democrats are in denial about the Supreme Court. Democrats — prepare to pack the Supreme Court: If Republicans refuse to let the other party govern, all options should be on the table. The Supreme Court is not coming to the rescue. Supreme Court is now Trump’s, and so we grieve for America.
