Weekly Roundup, January 8, 2016

Did you miss your Supreme Court news this week? Let our Weekly Roundup help. (To stay on top of the latest Supreme Court happenings, follow ISCOTUS on Twitter.)

In an op-ed in the Boston Globe, Hillary Clinton described the upcoming presidential election as a  “make-or-break moment—for the court and our country” since the next President will likely have the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court justices. “There’s nothing surprising,” in Clinton’s op-ed, tweeted Ian Millhiser, “but it’s a big deal that she wrote it.”

Anticipating next week’s oral arguments for Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, commentary abounds. Coverage comes from Education Week, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune, among others.

On Tuesday, over 100 women lawyers filed a brief supporting challenges to the Texas law that would result in the closing of many of the state’s abortion clinics. Richard Wolf reported for USA Today.

Chief Justice Roberts released a year end report focusing on recent changes to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Coverage and commentary on the reports come from The Wall Street Journal and the Civil Procedure and Federal Courts Blog.

Linda Hirshman, author a recent book on Justices O’Connor and Ginsburg, wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post discussing the possibility of a nomination deadlock leaving the Supreme Court with eight justices.  Noting the rule that any tie vote on the Supreme Court means that the lower court’s holding controls, Hirschman concludes: “Thanks to a wealth of recent Democratic appointments on the lower courts, letting the Supreme Court go down to eight justices would favor liberals.”

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