I’ll let you know when we get to the Man Bites Dog part.
This morning, the Washington Post gives a comprehensive account of all the federal judges who are comprehensively pissed off by the incompetence and contumacious behavior of attorneys working for the US Justice Department.
Meanwhile, the New York Times explains in some detail how “a deep bench of conservative lawyers” are working for Harvard. I touched on this topic in an earlier post, but the Times has more resources to fill out the story in detail, as compared with one old guy like me sitting in his man cave with a computer and an internet connection.
For what it’s worth, I disagree with the last paragraph of the Times article, wherein someone is quoted as saying that judges might feel “manipulated” if someone hires lawyers with whom they agree ideologically and who are their friends. Well, I suppose that could happens. And I suppose there could come a time when God stops making little green apples and it stops raining in Indianapolis in the summertime.
In other news, also good, Abbe Lowell, Esquire, has left Winston & Strawn (a Big Law firm known as a business litigation powerhouse) and formed a new firm to represent people and institutions targeted by Trump. Some of the associates in his new firm, Lowell & Associates, come from big firms that have bowed the knee to Mango Mussolini.
A big news item on Friday evening was Judge Beryl Howell’s 100+ page opinion granting summary judgment to Perkins Coie in its suit to undo Trump’s executive order against it. Dog Bites Man: no, said the judge, to a Team Trump ignorant of the basic rules of constitutional law, it won’t do to retaliate against a person or an institution for exercising their constitutional rights, said the judge. And, she added, “If the founding history of this country is any guide, those who stood up in court to vindicate constitutional rights and, by so doing, served to promote the rule of law, will be the models lauded when this period of American history is written.”
I said I would let you know when we get to the Man Bites Dog news. We’re here. And that news is all good, too.
On Thursday, Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., a district judge in the Southern District of Texas appointed by Mango Mussolini back in 2018, handed Team Trump a major legal black eye when he blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act on the ground that the 1798 law is inapplicable, inasmuch as there has been no “invasion” or “predatory incursion” into the United States, as those terms were understood back in 1798.
Textualism and originalism, doncha know?
The American Civil Liberties Union represented the people about to be deported. I have not seen their brief, but I strongly suspect they argued their case in terms designed to appeal to the district judge, to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and to the majority of the Supreme Court.
Good for the ACLU. They’re arguing to win their case—not to make themselves popular in the faculty lounge at Harvard Law School or at the progressive table here at Happy Acres.
The ACLU is doing great work. Donate here.
Finally, some will say it would have been better if Judge Rodriguez had enjoined Team Trump throughout the nation, not just in the Southern District of Texas. But the judge may have believed those who argue that he lacked jurisdiction to issue a nationwide injunction. Or, he may have just wanted to keep the issue really, really simple, as the case moves forward on appeal.
In any event, the case is ripe and ready for appeal, as is Judge Howell’s decision in the Perkins Coie litigation.
Supreme Court, here we come.
Facing MAGA 