Category: Faculty Opinion Pieces

Professor Schmidt: “The Gorsuch Report—Week 4”

By Professor Christopher Schmidt

It’s been over three weeks since Judge Neil Gorsuch was nominated to become a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice. Here’s the latest news on his confirmation process.

Among the senators who will vote on his appointment, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer remains Gorsuch’s most vocal critic. The Democratic senator from New York previously took to the pages of the New York Times to air his concerns with Gorsuch. While praising Gorsuch as “clearly very smart, articulate and polite, with superb judicial demeanor,” Schumer criticized him for refusing “to answer even the most rudimentary questions” about where he stands on pressing legal issues. For Schumer, this all feels “eerily similar” to what happened when Chief Justice Roberts went through this same process. Roberts was “similarly charming, polished and erudite,” Schumer writes. He “played the part of a model jurist.” But “when Judge Roberts became Justice Roberts, we learned that we had been duped by an activist judge,” warns Schumer.

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Professor Schmidt: “The Gorsuch Report—Week 3”

By Professor Christopher Schmidt

Here are the latest headlines for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.  

The Clerks Speak Out. Judge Gorsuch’s past law clerks signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee declaring that his independence “will never waiver.” (The only former Gorsuch clerks who did not sign are two currently clerking at the Supreme Court.) The Federalist published a supportive statement from two of his former clerks, one liberal, one conservative. They identified three lessons they learned from clerking for Judge Gorsuch: “the importance of accessible and clear writing, devoid of legalese”; “the importance of stepping back from the law and facts on your side to analyze the holes in your case and the facts and law supporting the other side”;  and he “urged us to pursue a fulsome understanding of the nuance and complexity of the legal and factual issues in each case.”

Pegging Gorsuch. In a widely cited study, political scientists Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin and Kevin Quinn predicted that Judge Gorsuch would fall somewhere between Justices Alito and Thomas on the conservative end on the ideological spectrum of current Supreme Court justices (in the same territory that Justice Scalia occupied). Now we have another study, this one by political scientists Ryan Black and Ryan Owens, who argue that Gorsuch in fact would on the the far right on the ideological spectrum–more conservative even than Justice Thomas.

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Professor Rosado on the Failure of the Puzder Nomination

By Professor César Rosado Marzán

The nomination of fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder had failure written all over the place since the day it was announced. Puzder is known for being virulently anti-worker. His employees have filed scores of lawsuits against his company. He has publicly said that he prefers robots to employees because robots do not complain. In all, Puzder is a fanatical employer advocate with no apparent interest in meeting workers half way. Continue reading “Professor Rosado on the Failure of the Puzder Nomination”

Professor Shapiro on Playing Fast and Loose with Assertions of National Security

By Professor Carolyn Shapiro

There have now been approximately 25 cases filed around the country challenging President Trump’s executive order (“EO”) imposing a travel ban on refugees and on individuals from seven majority-Muslim countries, and TROs of various scopes have issued. (The University of Michigan Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is gathering filings in these cases.) Most famous, of course, is the nationwide TRO issued by the district court in Seattle in Washington v. Trump, the case brought by Washington and Minnesota, and the refusal of the Ninth Circuit – which treated the TRO as a preliminary injunction – to stay that order pending appeal. (The Ninth Circuit, at the request of at least one active judge, is now considering whether to rehear that decision en banc.) But other cases continue apace. Just yesterday, in a case called Aziz v. Trump, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia issued a preliminary injunction precluding enforcement of the portion of the Executive Order prohibiting entry into the United States by people from seven specific majority-Muslim countries. (This injunction applies only to Virginia residents as well as to students and employees of Virginia educational institutions.)

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Dean Krent on the “Two for One” Trump Administration Executive Regulatory Order

By Dean Harold J. Krent

On February 8th, Public Citizen, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Communications Workers of America sued the federal government, alleging that the President exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act in issuing Executive Order 13771 on Reducing Regulation. The Order directs “executive” agencies to identify for repeal two existing regulations for every new regulation proposed or issued and to ensure that the net costs of any new regulations in combination with repealed regulations not exceed zero. The suit argues that the Executive Order distorts the administrative process by requiring administrative agencies to focus exclusively on costs as opposed to the benefits of regulations, and that only Congress has the authority to direct agencies to prioritize reducing costs.

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Professor Shapiro on President Trump’s Attacks on the Judiciary

By Professor Carolyn Shapiro

The legal issues involving President Trump’s travel ban executive order are fascinating and complex. But equally significant have been the President’s attacks on the judiciary. It is one thing for a President to say that he disagrees with a ruling, that he has confidence in the constitutionality and legality of his actions, and that he is instructing his attorneys to appeal—but that is not what Trump has done. Instead, he has attacked the district court judge who issued the nationwide temporary restraining order as a “so-called judge,” he has called the Ninth Circuit opinion denying a stay “disgraceful,” and he has urged people to blame the judiciary if “something happens.” These kinds of statements reflect a dangerous attack on the very legitimacy of an independent judiciary.

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Alexander Dill: Implementing President Trump’s Dodd-Frank Directive May Lead to More Bailouts, Not Fewer, in the Next Crisis

By Alexander Dill
Clearing Corporation Charitable Foundation Practitioner in Residence

Last Friday, February 3, nearly two weeks into his term, President Trump issued a directive to revamp financial market regulation, aimed squarely at the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 without naming it but also encompassing the financial regulatory framework as a whole. The directive presents a vague framework in the form of several “core principles” that dovetail with Congressional Republicans’ complaints that regulatory burdens have crimped banks’ ability to lend, thus reducing business expansion and job growth. Among the core principles are the prevention of taxpayer-funded bailouts and the fostering of “economic growth and vibrant financial markets through more rigorous regulatory impact analysis that addresses systemic risk and market failures.”

However, Republicans’ claim flies in the face of the all-time high level of commercial and industrial lending since 2010, as pointed out by Jordan Weissman of Slate Magazine. It is possible that the true source of concern is the reduced return on equity resulting from the higher capital requirements, with historically low interest rates a contributing factor. These factors have hit banks where it hurts most – lowering profitability and depressing stock prices. If banks can return more capital to shareholders, with one estimate at $100 billion by the six largest banks due to potentially looser regulation, through buybacks and dividends, stock prices will increase. In fact, the market expected as much in its reaction to the President’s February 3 directive as bank stocks moved upward.

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Professor Schmidt: “The Gorsuch Report—Week 2”

By Professor Christopher W. Schmidt

It has been over a week since President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The widely respected and impressively credentialed Judge Gorsuch, currently sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

The nomination was met with the predictable outpouring of support from Republicans, while the response from Democrats has been more mixed. Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein praised Gorsuch calling him “caring” and “obviously legally very smart.” CBS News reports that Senator Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not promise a vote for Gorsuch but describes him as “impressive.”

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Professor Perritt: We Lost!

By Professor Henry H. Perritt, Jr.

America is a democracy, and a lot of my fellow Democrats seem to have forgotten that. Donald Trump got elected president of the United States, and he has been doing pretty much what he said he was going to do during the campaign. That’s the way democracies are supposed to work.

To be sure, they are also supposed to work through checks and balances. Democratic pressure on the President’s cabinet nominees is part of that. So also is the scrutiny given to the President’s immigration order by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday.

I’ve been involved in politics all my life. I’ve helped run mayoral campaigns in Boston and Atlanta, state representative campaigns in Boston and Atlanta, aldermanic campaigns in Chicago, and a national campaign in Kosovo. I’ve worked on the White House staff and on two transitions, the one from Ford to Carter and the one from Bush to Clinton.

Having run unsuccessfully for office myself (as the Democratic nominee against Mark Kirk for the U. S. House of Representatives in 2002), I know that all you have a right to ask for is an opportunity to be able to deliver your message. If it resonates with enough people you get elected. If it doesn’t, you don’t. I often said to my friends in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraqi Kurdistan, as I worked on various nation-building exercises there and wrote two books on Kosovo, the test of a democracy is not how well you win, but what do you do when you lose.

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Dean Krent: Thoughts on the February 7 Ninth Circuit Oral Argument on the Immigration Executive Order

By Dean Harold Krent

First, kudos to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for livestreaming the oral argument.  The technology was not perfect, but opening the hearing to all citizens represents a needed step toward transparency in light of the controversy engendered by the Executive Order.

Second, the panel was prepared and peppered both sides with tough questions.  The judges, despite their different ideological leanings (Judges Canby and Friedland were appointed by Democratic presidents, and Judge Clifton by a Republican), bolstered the image of an independent judiciary committed to the rule of law.

Third, despite the risks of predicting votes based on questions in oral arguments, the panel in my view is leaning towards recognizing that the State of Washington enjoyed standing to bring the lawsuit.  At least two of the judges seemed convinced that the State could sue in its proprietary capacity because of its allegations that state universities would suffer if students and professors could not get into the country.  In any event, the DOJ attorney conceded that individuals and their families who were directly affected by the Executive Order had standing, so that even if the State of Washington could not bring suit, other plaintiffs could.

Fourth, on the merits, there was little discussion of the question of the Order’s inconsistency with the 1965 statute, other than apparent agreement that the statute only prohibits country of origin categorization with respect to granting immigrant visas, and the President’s Order reaches far more broadly.

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