In the past week, CFJ had interviews and commentary featured in Bloomberg, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Communications Daily, and others. Links and quotes can be found below.
Interviews & Commentary
Bloomberg: "The best way to survive is to pick a Gorsuch-type person who is a textualist or originalist, but who really doesn’t have a record of speaking and writing on abortion," said Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative judicial advocacy group.
Senior Senate Republicans are pre-emptively hoping to steer Trump toward such a pick. And Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley’s staff sent a memo to reporters citing the "Ginsburg standard" -- referring to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 1993 confirmation -- noting that recent Supreme Court nominees have all declined to answer questions about how they would handle particular cases.
"For the crowd for whom abortion is No. 1, maybe half of those people still get it, and that somebody who is an originalist will make them happy when it comes to abortion and other social issues,” Levey said.
Communications Daily: Committee for Justice Director-Public Policy Ashley Baker noted the disappointment Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed in his lone dissent that the court did not more broadly address the third-party doctrine.
Baker said Gorsuch’s dissent was essentially a concurrence but argued the third-party doctrine is irreconcilable with the Fourth Amendment...
The Guardian: But others suggest that predictions of doom for Roe v Wade are exaggerated. Curt Levey, president of the rightwing advocacy group the Committee for Justice, said: “I don’t see [chief justice] John Roberts overturning it. I think conservative justices are also conservative in the small ‘c’ sense. They just don’t see the courts’ role as being radical change.
“Will they slowly eat away at Roe so at future date it might be overturned? Possibly. But right now I just don’t see it.”
...Levey said: “The Democrats have very little chance of stopping the nominee where they are. They have to put on a show for their base but I suspect, when it’s over, we’ll be surprised that it was not a fight to the death, just a fight to clawing each other’s eyes out.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Curt A. Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group, helped challenge the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s race-conscious programs while working at the Center for Individual Rights. He played down the significance of the new guidance.
“It has symbolic value, but I don’t know that it will make a lot of difference on the ground,” Levey said. “For people like me, who are very skeptical of affirmative action, it gives us some momentum. But psychological momentum won’t do a lot of good. Someone actually has to bring lawsuits. And lawsuits are few and far between.”
As in many admissions evaluations, context matters here. Once again the fairness of considering an applicant’s race is a front-page question. A high-profile lawsuit challenging Harvard University’s use of race is well underway. The Justice Department has begun an investigation of alleged discrimination against Asian-American applicants at Harvard. And Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who cast the deciding vote in Fisher, has announced his retirement. His replacement could tilt the balance of the court in a future affirmative-action case.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, praised Trump’s appointments on the 11th Circuit.“It’s a circuit that Republicans have to have,” Levey said. “I feel very good about how it’s gone so far.”
Online Gambling: Curt Levey, who is a member of the conservative Committee for Justice told Politico that picking the 49-year-old woman for the Supreme Court would make sense.“It’s harder to make the case that a woman is against women’s rights,” Levey said. “It takes on special significance when people expect abortion to probably be the biggest issue.”
California Political Review: “Rapid technological change inevitably outpaces the glacial evolution of the law and the Carpenter case is a perfect example,” writes legal commentator Curt Levey. “The location data in question was obtained under the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which did not require prosecutors to meet the “probable cause” standard of a warrant.”