R. Henry Weaver

@WalkingNPR Glad I’m not the only one! Completely anecdotal, but I feel like people were better at this before losing practice during the pandemic. Two people can and should fit back to back in the aisle!

Illinois law prohibits pay deductions as a method of employee discipline. If you or someone you know has witnessed this practice, call the Workplace Rights Hotline at 844-740-5076.

Today the Illinois Attorney General reached a settlement with a medical staffing company that charged employees fees if they missed work. The company agrees to pay $950k in back wages and interest. illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/news/story/att…

@RMFifthCircuit Yes! And this is why CJ Roberts’s recent claim in his letter to Senator Durbin that Taft testified on a mundane matter back in 1922 is, whatever else one might say, wrong on the facts. It was part of a judicial lobbying effort to alter their own jurisdiction! Not banal.

(3) I did not know (maybe I once knew?) that President/Chief Justice/apocryphal stuck-in-a-tubber Howard Taft was responsible for the creation of certiorari as the gateway for SCOTUS review. Steve covers that with relish early in the book.

After receiving my copy of the Shadow Docket early, it seemed like key #AppellateTwitter fodder. This is not intended as *review.* Just my impressions as I read it fairly bleary eyed over a couple of evenings So, 10 things about @steve_vladeck new book.

@ddayen Totally agree on standing here, but I want to point out that in other contexts it is good that governments are not bound by waivers signed by private parties. It’s what allows Attorneys General to ignore arbitration clauses and enforce employment protections, for instance.

This is the language. A servicer like MOHELA "waives and releases all current and future claims" if they lose loans for whatever reason prospect.org/justice/2023-0…

So I read the great @StrikeDebt report on the Supreme Court's student debt case, and buried in there are some amazing facts. Like this: the loan servicer being used as the basis for standing is *barred from suing the Education Department* by contract: prospect.org/justice/2023-0…

For background on this, see Edward Harnett's brilliant "Questioning Certiorari," among other sources. None of what I've said above is obscure in the legal academy. 7/7 jstor.org/stable/1123589

But Taft won. The "Judges Bill" passed in 1925 and eliminated mandatory jurisdiction over wide swaths of cases--the details aren't super important here. Today, the Court has total power to "decide what to decide," an awesome power that fits uneasily with the judicial role. 6/x

Many things to say here, but one thing is that CJ Roberts is totally wrong about Taft's testimony to Congress being "mundane." Taft testified before Congress as part of a massive power grab by the court to abolish its mandatory jurisdiction. 1/x

@MattBruenig Also, Taft’s unabashed lobbying efforts to free the Court from mandatory appeals were not mundane! It was a huge power grab! This is well trod ground among legal historians. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…