Live blog of opinions - Thursday, July 9, 2020
We will be live-blogging on Thursday, July 9, as the court releases the final opinions from the 2019-2020 term. SCOTUSblog is sponsored by Casetext: making litigation more efficient with A.I. and machine learning technology.
For a list of answers to frequently asked questions during our live blogs, click here.
3rd & 7 37yd
3rd & 7 37yd
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In a footnote, Roberts notes that the "daylight between our opinion" and the Thomas "dissent" is "not as great as that label might suggest." "We agree that Presidents are neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas nor insulated by a heightened need standard." Here's some key language: "We agree that Presidents may challenge specific subpoenas as impeding their Article II functions." "And although we affirm while Justice Thomas would vacate, we agree that this case will be remanded to the District Court."
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Here is a SCOTUSblog link to the Mazars opinion: https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/19-715_febh.pdf
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The Court has vacated the decisions below in Mazars, and it holds that congressional subpoenas may be enforceable but that the courts below did not take account of all the possible separation of powers concerns. The case will this go on. So this issue is back in the hands of the DC and Second Circuits for now.
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As Eric outlines below, this is basically a Goldilocks approach. The test proposed by the president and the SG is too tough. The House test is too lax. The court outlines a set of "special considerations" that the courts should take into account on remand and sends the cases back to the lower courts for further consideration. So I am going to take back my suggestion that this is more of a win for the president than Vance -- I think it's basically the same. In this set of cases and the Vance case, we are going to have more litigation, and no one is going to see any financial documents any time soon.
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@Mark: Connecting to Scotus's clean-up conference, and your comment about analyzing the stat pack, I think I would like one more live blog where scotusblog does a sort of clean-up where pop culture references and trends in voting and the circuits get pointed out that may have been missed when everyone was under the 5-10 minute release schedule. Maybe that's just me being a nerd though.
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Justice Alito dissents too. He agrees "that the lower court erred and that these cases must be remanded," but he does not "think that the considerations outlined by the Court can be properly satisfied unless the House is required to show more than it has put forward to date."