#julie s. biskup

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tge thing

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The Importance Of Jacobson Vs. Massachusetts

By Lauren Beizer, Villanova University Class of 2023

July 10, 2020

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world awaits the production of a vaccine. All are optimistic that once a vaccine is found, it will be widely produced and made available to the general public. Although vaccines are scientifically proven to be effective when trying to prevent disease, it is inevitable that a percentage of the general public may refuse to take the vaccine [1]. Vaccinating the majority of the world’s population against COVID-19 may be a possible solution to ending the public health crisis [2].

The legal question posed by this scenario is this: can American citizens be required by law to take the coronavirus vaccine? This is an important question because it involves citizen’s personal freedoms to their own bodies and the hostile effect of the deadly virus on the American healthcare system. From what we know about the spread of COVID-19, the more people that take the vaccine, then the less chance of rapid spread of the coronavirus and then less strain on the country’s healthcare system. But, on the other hand, it is difficult to determine whether American citizens can be compelled to take the vaccine to benefit the whole of American society. There is precedent to answer this question in a United States Supreme Court Case from 1905: Jacobson vs. Massachusetts.

The facts of the case present that a Massachusetts law allowed cities to require residents to be vaccinated against smallpox during an outbreak of the vicious disease in the early nineteenth century [3]. The city of Cambridge adopted this ordinance, with some minor exceptions. The board of health of the city of Cambridge proclaimed at the time that “whereas, smallpox has been prevalent to some extent in the city of Cambridge, and still continues to increase; and whereas, it is necessary for the speedy extermination of the disease that all persons not protected by vaccination should be vaccinated; and whereas, in the opinion of the board, the public health and safety require the vaccination or revaccination of all the inhabitants of Cambridge; be it ordered, that all the inhabitants habitants of the city who have not been successfully vaccinated since March 1st, 1897, be vaccinated or revaccinated” [4]. Despite this decision, Cambridge resident, Henning Jacobson, refused to comply with the law and was thus prosecuted and fined five dollars [3].

The question presented to the United States Supreme Court was: did the mandatory vaccination law violate Jacobson’s Fourteenth Amendment right to liberty? [3]. The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution declares that no state can make or enforce any law that deprives American citizens of life, liberty, or property. Jacobson and his counsel were primarily focused on the provision surrounding personal liberties.

The Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute, concluding that the law was legitimately in the scope of the state's police power to protect the overall public health and safety of its citizens. The United States Constitution secures liberty for every person within its jurisdiction, but does not give an absolute right for each person to be free from restraint at all time and in all circumstances. Every person living in the United States is required to be subject to various restraints for the common good [5].

The efforts by the city of Cambridge to stamp out the smallpox epidemic are substantially related to the protection of public health and safety [5]. Local boards of health determine when mandatory vaccines are needed for the common good, thus making the requirement of getting a smallpox vaccination neither unreasonable or arbitrarily imposed [3].

If a COVID-19 vaccination were to be developed and made widely available, governments could arguably mandate these injections citing the precedent of Jacobson vs. Massachusetts.

Interestingly, Jacobson vs. Massachusetts has been cited recently by courts which have allowed many states during the COVID-19 pandemic to curb individual liberties during this public health crisis. In the first decision of its kind during the coronavirus pandemic, the “5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals relied wholly on the 1905 decision to permit Texas to include abortion clinics in its ban on non-essential medical services and surgeries” [6]. Surprisingly enough, on the other hand, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used Jacobson vs. Massachusetts to assert that in Tennesee, the governor must modify his executive order to permit abortions to continue happening during the pandemic, because they are considered a constitutional right under Roe vs. Wade [7]. The Tennessee decision proved opposite of the decision in Texas. Jacobson vs. Massachusetts has become a crucial case during these unprecedented times as it has been granting and restricting state power.

The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed states to use their authority to limit what they deem is best for the common good. This has a threat to become excessive as states could curb individual liberties found and protected in the United States Constitution. The respective states and federal government can use the decision set forth in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, very liberally, as long as they make a good case for why their mandates are beneficial for the common good.

As the coronavirus pandemic progresses, there are questions surrounding the production and distribution of a vaccine. Once a vaccine is disbursed, there will also likely be uncertainty concerning whether cities will enforce a mandate that requires every citizen to get vaccinated. The state and federal governments can argue that the mandatory vaccination will discontinue the rapid spread of the coronavirus, save lives, and put less of a strain on the American healthcare system. Citizens could retort that their personal liberties are being violated and that they have a right to decide whether or not they take the vaccine. Jacobson vs. Massachusetts will serve as an extremely important precedent on this issue.

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Lauren Beizer is a rising sophomore at Villanova University. She hopes to pursue a JD after graduating with a degree in Political Science and Business.

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[1] Smith, Tara C. “Vaccine Rejection and Hesitancy: A Review and Call to Action.” Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Oxford University Press, 18 July 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5597904/.

[2] Grossman, Lauren S., et al. “When a Covid-19 Vaccine Is Available, All Americans Should Get It.” STAT, 13 May 2020, www.statnews.com/2020/05/12/covid-19-vaccine-all-americans-should-get-it/.

[3] “Jacobson vs. Massachusetts .” Oyez , www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/197us11.

[4] “HENNING JACOBSON, Plff. in Err., v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.” Legal Information Institute, Legal Information Institute, 2020, www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/197/11.

[5] “Jacobson v. Massachusetts - 197 U.S. 11, 25 S. Ct. 358 (1905).” Community, www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-jacobson-v-massachusetts.

[6] Biskupic, Joan. “The 115-Year-Old Supreme Court Opinion That Could Determine Rights during a Pandemic.” CNN, Cable News Network, 10 Apr. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/politics/pandemic-coronavirus-jacobson-supreme-court-abortion-rights/index.html.

[7] Ebert, Joel. “Appellate Court Affirms Abortions in Tennessee Can Continue during Coronavirus Pandemic.” The Tennessean, Nashville Tennessean, 25 Apr. 2020, www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/25/abortion-services-tennessee-continue-during-pandemic-shutdown/3025900001/.

Photo Credit: Johannes Jansson

[maxwellyjordan]

Tuesday round-up

Yesterday the Supreme Court released decisions in three cases, including one of the highest-profile cases of the term. In June Medical Services v. Russo, the court, by a vote of 5-4, struck down a Louisiana law requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Amy Howe analyzes the opinion for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. Mariam Marshedi provides an analysis at Subscript Law. Ronn Blitzer and others report at Fox News that “[t]he opinion, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, noted that the Louisiana law is ‘almost word-for-word identical’ to a Texas law the court ruled was unconstitutional in 2016’s Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.” For the Los Angeles Times (subscription required), David Savage reports that “[i]t came as no surprise that the four liberal justices opposed the law since they struck down a similar Texas law four years ago[, b]ut the chief justice, a conservative who has consistently opposed abortion rights in the past and had voted to uphold the Texas law, cast the fifth vote with them, citing precedent as his reason.” At CNN, Caroline Kelly and Ariane de Vogue report that in his concurring opinion, “the chief justice left open the possibility that other states might be able to pursue similar restrictions.” Nina Totenberg and Brian Naylor report at NPR that “Roberts’ opinion is likely to stall attempts at overruling the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, and subsequent rulings that have reaffirmed that decision.”

Joan Biskupic writes at CNN that “[a]lthough he did not join the four liberals’ legal reasoning, likely stirring more anti-abortion litigation in the states, Roberts’ move marked the first time he had ever voted to strike down an abortion regulation.” Jess Bravin reports for The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that “[t]he decision marked the third time this month Chief Justice Roberts has frustrated conservatives who expected him to fall in line with the court’s right wing.” At Reuters, Lawrence Hurley and Jan Wolfe report that “Roberts, a traditional conservative protective of the Supreme Court as an institution, is the justice closest to being a swing vote following the 2018 retirement of fellow conservative Anthony Kennedy.” Robert Barnes reports for The Washington Post (subscription required) that “[e]very Supreme Court decision seems to confirm Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s pivotal role at the center of the court, and Monday’s ruling on abortion showed that restrictions on a woman’s right to the procedure for now will go only as far as the chief justice allows.”

The editorial board of The New York Times cautions that Roberts “appears to have decided that the circumstances of this case were not ideal for crippling reproductive rights — but he left the door open to doing so in the future.” At the Reproductive Rights Prof Blog, Cynthia Soohoo explains that Roberts’ “vote preserves abortion access in Louisiana and the undue burden standard, but it does so in a manner that casts substantial doubt on the balancing test the Court adopted just 4 years ago, which may it more difficult to challenge other types of abortion restrictions in the future.” Leah Litman explains at Take Care that “[t]he Chief Justice’s reasoning … makes clear that the victory is not only narrow, but likely pyrrhic as well.” The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal laments that “Russo continues a dismaying string of rulings by the Chief Justice—less due to their result than their reasoning.”  At National Review, Dan McLaughlin writes that “Roberts refused to join Justice Breyer’s opinion, but by joining its outcome he prevented the Court’s conservatives from doing anything to keep the Court from constantly rewriting its own rules.” Additional commentary comes from Ruthann Robson at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Michael Bobelian at Forbes, the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, Margaret Drew at the Human Rights at Home Blog, Michael Dorf at Dorf on Law, and Melissa Murray in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

In Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the court ruled 5-4 that the structure of the CFPB, which is run by a single director who can only be removed for cause, is unconstitutional, but left in place the rest of the statute creating the agency. This blog’s argument analysis, which was first published at Howe on the Court, comes from Amy Howe. Michael Hollingsworth has an analysis at Subscript Law. At NPR, Nina Totenberg and Brian Naylor report that although “[t]he decision was a victory for President Trump and for forces in the business community that have long sought to trim the sails of independent regulatory agencies,” “the court did not go as far as the challengers had wanted, limiting the decision to the single-director structure of the CFPB.” For The New York Times, Adam Liptak and Alan Rappeport report that “[w]hile the narrow decision validates the agency’s existence, it could also open it to greater politicization, effectively turning its director into something akin to a cabinet member who serves at the pleasure of a president.” The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal complains that “[b]y ratifying most of the bureau’s unconstitutional design, the ruling will encourage Congress to create more agencies that violate the separation of powers[:] The majority essentially says the Court will preserve an agency’s structure as long as the law includes a severability provision.” In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Richard Cordray explains why, “[a]t least for the foreseeable future, this ‘losing’ verdict represents a big victory for consumers.”

The third opinion yesterday was in USAID v. Alliance for Open Society, in which the court held 5-3, with Justice Elena Kagan recused, that the enforcement against overseas groups of a requirement that recipients of federal funds to fight HIV/AIDS abroad have a policy opposing prostitution and sex trafficking does not violate the First Amendment. Amy Howe has this blog’s argument analysis, which was first published at Howe on the Court. Additional coverage comes from Tyler Olson at Fox News. At the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Ruthann Robson worries that “[t]he Court’s opinion could seriously impair overseas work by US aid organizations.”

The justices also released orders from last week’s conference; they did not add any cases to their merits docket for next term, they asked for the views of the solicitor general in two cases and they declined to review a challenge to the federal government’s lethal injection protocol. Amy Howe covers the order list for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. At Fox News, Tyler Olson reports that “[t]hree executions scheduled days apart, beginning on July 13, would mark the first time the federal government has executed prisoners since 2003[; a] fourth inmate is scheduled to be executed in August.” Laurel Wamsley reports at NPR that “[a]ttorneys for the four inmates have argued that the use of a single drug, rather than the three-drug cocktail required in many states, is a violation of a mandate that federal executions be carried out ‘in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.'” For The Wall Street Journal, Jess Bravin reports that “[t]he inmates’ attorneys have raised additional legal issues they hope could put off the executions.”

At Bloomberg Law, Ellen Gilmer reports that the court also “won’t review an environmental case that could have had big implications for both the U.S.-Mexico border wall and a major legal doctrine affecting federal agencies.” Also at Bloomberg Law, Gilmer reports on other environmental law cases on yesterday’s order list here and here (subscription required). Heather Cameron notes at CPR Speaks that the court “declined to grant certiorari on a petition requesting clarification of the Federal Arbitration Act’s ‘evident partiality’ standard.”

Briefly:

At Reason, Damon Root writes that “[a]s the growing divide among ‘conservative’ judges in criminal justice cases” illustrated in several recent Supreme Court rulings “makes clear, such labels frequently obscure more than they reveal.”

In an op-ed for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Daniel Cotter suggests that, despite the chief justices’ votes in some recent cases, “mighty Roberts has not struck out on the conservative movement.”

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[maxwellyjordan]

Friday round-up

Yesterday the Supreme Court decided another of the term’s most closely watched cases, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, ruling that the government’s decision to terminate the DACA program, which allowed undocumented young people brought to this country as children to apply for protection from deportation, violated the procedural requirements prescribed for administrative agencies. Amy Howe analyzes the opinion for this blog, in a post that was first published at Howe on the Court. For The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Brent Kendall, Jess Bravin and Michelle Hackman report that “[t]he court, in a 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, said the administration acted arbitrarily when it moved to end the … program, failing to offer adequate reasons for doing so.” Adam Liptak and Michael Shear report for The New York Times that “[t]he court’s ruling means the Trump administration officials will have to provide a lower court with a more robust justification for ending the program[; t]hat process is likely to take many months, putting the administration’s assault on the program in limbo until after the November election.” At Fox News, Ronn Blitzer and Bill Mears report that “Roberts made clear that the administration does indeed have the power to rescind DACA, just not in this fashion.”

At NPR, Nina Totenberg reports that “[w]hile the decision gives DACA and its hundreds of thousands of recipients a lifeline, the issue is far from settled.” Jess Bravin and Rebecca Balhaus report for The Wall Street Journal that “[t]he decision immediately made waves in the presidential race, with Mr. Trump emphasizing the importance of picking conservative judges and his presumptive opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, pledging a sharply different course on immigration policy if he wins.” Pamela King reports at E&E News that the decision “also preserves the judiciary’s ability to consider rollbacks of environmental laws.” Mark Walsh covers the decision for Education Week.

Greg Stohr reports at Bloomberg that President Donald Trump “endured a disastrous week at the high court, losing fights over LGBT job-bias suits and his bid to end the DACA deferred-deportation program”; [t]he repeated blows left Trump seething[, b]ut the DACA decision suggested it was Trump’s penchant for short-cuts, rather than any personal animus, that led him to defeat.” At USA Today, Richard Wolf reports that “the man most responsible for the unexpected turn of events” in this week’s major decisions “was the leader of the supposedly conservative court – a label that is coming under a little re-examination.” Joan Biskupic reports at CNN that “[t]he conspicuous moves by a generally reliable conservative reveal a chief justice trying to defuse disputes that bring the nation’s high court into tension with the US president.” Additional coverage comes from Steven Mazie at The Economist’s Espresso blog and Tucker Higgins at CNBC.

The editorial board of National Review laments that “[f]or the second time in a week, the Supreme Court has allowed liberals to enact one of their longstanding legislative priorities without the consent of Congress or the president.” At the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Ruthann Robson observes that the majority’s “focus on the APA is not surprising although there were constitutional issues.” At FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux writes that if the reasoning in the DACA case “sounds similar to Roberts’s ruling last year on whether the Trump administration could add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, you’re on to something.” The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal maintains that, “[a]s Justice Thomas explains, a President should not have to follow normal administrative procedures to reverse a policy that was unlawful in the first place.”

At the Immigration Prof Blog, Minyao Wang notes that the court “declined to address whether DACA was a lawful exercise of Executive Branch authority, even though this central issue was comprehensively briefed by the parties and amici.” At PrawfsBlawg, Juan Carlos Gomez views the decision as “more of a victory for those [who] believe in limiting the power of any administration to avoid or to limit judicial review, than it is for immigrant rights advocates.” Also at PrawfsBlawg, Howard Wasserman notes that the decision “again avoided the scope-of-injunction issue and the propriety of universal/non-particularized injunctions, in a clever way.” Stanford Law School’s Legal Aggregate blog offers a Q&A about the decision with immigration law experts Jayashri Srikantiah and Lisa Weissman-Ward. Garrett Epps writes at The Atlantic that the “fate [of the “Dreamers,”] like so much else that matters in American life, will be squarely on the November presidential ballot.” Additional commentary comes from Kevin Johnson at the Immigration Prof Blog.

Amy Howe reports for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court, that, “[a]fter the federal government announced that it plans to resume executions in July after a pause of nearly 20 years, the Supreme Court [yester]day put the dispute over the lethal-injection protocol that the government plans to use in those executions on a fast track.”  Kent Scheidegger writes at Crime & Consequences that “the issue of the validity of the federal execution protocol is important, and given the badly splintered outcome in the Court of Appeals, … it needs to be resolved by the Supreme Court”.

Jennifer Hijazi reports at E&E News that Monday’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, in which the court held that federal employment discrimination law protects gay and transgender employees, “could provide powerful ammunition for climate litigators.” In an op-ed at Bloomberg Law, Alan Morrison writes that “[t]he most obvious lesson about textualism from” the majority and dissenting opinions in Bostock “is that textualism is not a tool that can be easily applied to produce an agreed upon result.” At Understanding the ADA, William Goren explains why this case “will have an absolutely huge impact on people with disabilities.” At The Federalist, Margot Cleveland decries “the court’s faulty analysis of the question of Title VII’s application to transgender persons.” At First Things, Hadley Arkes calls the majority’s reasoning “a morally empty jurisprudence.” Pam Karlan, who argued Bostock on behalf of the plaintiff, discusses the decision with Joseph Bankman at Stanford Law School’s Legal Aggregate Blog. Additional commentary comes from Gerard Magliocca at PrawfsBlawg, Sean Smith at Ikuta Matata, John Bursch in an op-ed for The Detroit News and John Vlahoplus at The George Washington Law Review’s On the Docket blog. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in  various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of respondent Stephens in Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC, which was decided along with Bostock.]

Briefly:

At Crime & Consequences, Kent Scheidegger comments on the court’s decision earlier this week to stay the execution of a Texas death-row inmate challenging the state’s refusal to allow him to have a spiritual advisor with him in the execution chamber.

At On the Docket, Emily Hammond writes that although Monday’s decision in S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, that the Forest Service had the authority to grant a right of way for a natural gas pipeline through lands traversed by the Appalachian Trail, was “a technical victory for the [Atlantic Coast Pipeline], the decision left untouched the bulk of the Fourth Circuit’s rulings—including the numerous findings that the Forest Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously with respect to the environmental impacts of the pipeline.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]

We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com. Thank you!

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[maxwellyjordan]

Tuesday round-up

This morning the Supreme Court begins the second week of the November session with two oral arguments. First up is Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, a high-profile challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the DACA program, which allowed immigrants brought to this country illegally as children to apply for protection from deportation. Amy Howe previewed the case for this blog; her preview first appeared at Howe on the Court. Gabrielle Kanter and Jingyi Alice Yao preview the case at Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. Subscript Law has a graphic explainer for the case.

At Reuters, Lawrence Hurley reports that “[t]he justices will hear the Trump administration’s appeals of three lower court rulings – in California, New York and the District of Columbia – that found that the president violated a U.S. law called the Administrative Procedure Act in seeking to kill DACA.” At Fox News, Shannon Bream and Bill Mears report that “with a ruling expected in the midst of a presidential election year, the case puts the high court at the center of one of the most politically charged issues since the start of President Trump’s term.” At CNN, Joan Biskupic reports that “[l]awyers trying to save [the DACA] program … are strategically directing their arguments to one man: Chief Justice John Roberts.” At Education Week, Mark Walsh focuses on the effect the DACA ruling may have on students, teachers and schools.

For The New York Times, Michael Shear, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Adam Liptak report that the refusal of acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke “to cite [the administration’s] policy objections to [DACA] is now at the heart of what legal experts say is a major weakness in the government’s case defending the termination of the program.” Additional coverage of the DACA case comes from Jess Bravin, Brent Kendall and Michelle Hackman for The Wall Street Journal (subscription required); Tucker Higgins at CNBC; Pete Williams at NBC News; Robert Barnes for The Washington Post, (subscription required); Jonathan Blitzer at The New Yorker; Steven Mazie for The Economist, here and here, and on The Intelligence podcast here; Richard Wolf for USA Today, here and here; and Nina Totenberg at NPR, here, here, and here, where she reports that “[s]ometimes lost in all the legal discussion are the people whose lives will be affected by the Supreme Court’s decision in the DACA case.” For CNN, Catherine Shoichet talks to a group of Dreamers who have marched from New York City to Washington “to make sure Supreme Court justices and members of the public know how much this matters.”

At Balkinization, Andrew Pincus observes that “[i]n a time of intense polarization and suspicion of government institutions, the courts’ role in reviewing administrative agency decisions is more important than ever.” Garrett Epps at the Atlantic calls the decision-making behind the case an example of how “bad lawyering and contempt for the rule of law have resulted in Trump initiatives being derailed in the lower courts.” At Microsoft’s blog, Brad Smith writes that “this fight is not just about our employees[:] It’s also about the potential impact of DACA rescission on the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, on businesses across the country, and on the innovation economy that is central to the nation’s prosperity.” Additional commentary comes from Greg Sargent in an op-ed for The Washington Post, the Post’s editorial board, Sen. Bob Menendez in an op-ed at NBC News, and David Leopold at Medium. The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal argues that “Daca recipients who in good faith identified themselves to the government should be protected, but this is for Congress and the President to negotiate—not for unelected judges to pre-empt.”

This morning’s second argument is in Hernandez v. Mesa, a case arising from a Mexican family’s efforts to hold a U.S. Border Patrol agent liable for the shooting death of their son, who was on the Mexican side of the border. This blog’s preview came from Amy Howe, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. Kayla Anderson and Angela Shin Wei Ting preview the case for Cornell. In an op-ed for USA Today, Anya Bidwell and Nick Sibilla maintain that “for most of this country’s history, individuals — Americans and foreigners alike — successfully sued federal officers who violated their rights,” and that disallowing the family’s claim “would let federal agents go rogue without any culpability for their misconduct.”

On Friday, the court added one case to its merits docket: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com, which asks whether the addition of “.com” to a generic term creates a protectable trademark. Amy Howe covers the grant for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. The justices also released the January argument calendar: Amy Howe’s coverage for this blog, which first appeared at Howe on the Court, is here.

Briefly:

At Bloomberg, Greg Stohr reports that Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who “has done his best to keep a low profile in the 13 months since one of the most polarizing Senate confirmation fights in U.S. history,” “will be back in the spotlight when he gives the featured dinner speech on Thursday at the annual Washington convention of the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative legal group that helped put him on the court.”

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Michael McGough weighs in on last week’s oral argument in Kansas v. Glover, the court will decide whether, for the purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for a police office to suspect that the registered owner of a car is the driver, arguing that “[i]f the court rules for Kansas, police will be able to stop a car based on the status of the owner’s driver’s license — even though it may be the owner’s son or daughter (or neighbor) behind the wheel.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondent in this case.]

At the Pacific Legal Foundation blog, Ethan Blevins urges the justices to grant a cert petition that asks the court “to grapple with the constitutionality of Seattle’s new-fangled campaign finance scheme, known as the ‘Democracy Voucher,’” which, he argues, “[forces property owners to underwrite other people’s campaign contributions.”

At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost writes that although the “Supreme Court has yet to issue any decisions this term, … the justices’ partisan tilt can be seen in several of the term’s early case-selecting decisions.”

At City Journal, Myron Magnet hails the court’s recent efforts to “get[] back to the Framers’ Constitution—as perfected by the Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the Nineteenth Amendment—and see[] the luminous modernity of its guarantee of liberty and its expectation of self-reliance.”

At National Review, Carrie Severino argues that a call for Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh to recuse themselves from three pending employment-discrimination cases reflects “a glaring double standard.”

We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com. Thank you!

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