Welcome to this week’s edition of the Deadline: Legal Newsletter, a roundup of top legal stories, including the latest developments from the Supreme Court, Donald Trump’s legal cases and more. Click here to have the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every Friday this Supreme Court term.
The Supreme Court finally released an ethics code this week, but it’s barely worth the paper it’s printed on. For one thing, as MSNBC Daily columnist Jessica Levinson pointed out, there’s no enforcement mechanism. Sure, there’s something to be said for the court responding to public scrutiny — even if half-heartedly and condescendingly — but this response doesn’t inspire confidence in the institution. So it was good to see Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., of the Judiciary Committee tell Nicolle that he still wants subpoenas for Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo, two of the men behind scandals that prompted scrutiny leading up to the code’s begrudging issuance.
Another high court embarrassment this week was called out by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Writing for herself and the other two Democratic appointees, Jackson noted an “indisputable legal error” in a solitary confinement case. The lower court had ruled against a prisoner who was kept for years without exercise in an unsanitary cell the size of a parking space. But it takes four justices to review a case, and the irrefutable blunder wasn’t enough for a single GOP-appointed justice on the 6-3 court to care. Rather, three of those Republican appointees — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — displayed their priorities when they dissented from their colleagues’ declining to grant Florida the ability to enforce its anti-drag law.
Turning, as we inevitably do, to the man who appointed a third of the court, Donald Trump’s diverse legal docket continued apace, as he pushed to delay the federal election interference case pending the resolution of his immunity claim. However,…
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