Supreme Court An ‘Intimate’ Place, Says Toobin

The Supreme Court is a more transparent place now than in years past, says New Yorker legal correspondent and author Jeffrey Toobin in an interview with SCOTUSDaily. That is thanks to centralized information portals like SCTOUSBlog, he says, as well as excellent reporting from people like Nina Totenberg and Adam Liptak. But he finds the lack of live video or, at the very least, live audio, befuddling. “I can’t even entertain any arguments against live feeds of the audio of the arguments, that to me is just sheer cussedness on the part of the court,” Toobin said. Also, he thinks it’s “kind of amazing that our highest court can’t bestir itself to decide more than 75 cases a year. Their nine-month work schedule and 75 case work budget is not going to cause any of them to die of overwork, that’s for sure.” Of the unprecedented obstruction Senate Republicans mounted against President Obama’s nomination for the vacant Supreme Court slot, Toobin says, “[I]t is now more politicized than ever. We have one political party that is willing to bring the process to a halt for a year to protect a seat on the Supreme Court and I anticipate that if the Democrats get control of the Senate, unlikely though that may be, at the end of Donald Trump’s term, they will respond in kind.” Though, he adds, “[I]f there’s anything to be learned from the experience of 2016, it’s that people like me should make fewer predictions, not more.”