Dem
51
GOP
49
Last week, when we wrote about the effort by the Judicial Conference of the United States (JCOTUS) to reduce judge shopping, we noted that while partisans from both sides of the aisle do it, it's more common among Republican partisans because there are more one-conservative-judge divisions (in semi-rural areas, mostly) than there are one-liberal-judge divisions. We should have added that Republicans are also more likely to hold extreme positions of the sort that can only be realized through the judiciary (because they can't get through the legislative process).
As chance would have it, it took just hours for us to be proven correct, as a number of prominent Republicans sent a letter to the chief judge of each district urging them to ignore the new JCOTUS policy. The letter, which was instigated by, and bears the signature of, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), declares that "Judicial Conference policy is not legislation," and points out that the question of which cases should be assigned to which judges is the province of each judicial district, and not that of the JCOTUS.
In the letter, McConnell and his colleagues pick and choose statutes that support their position. And they do have an argument here. That said, the Constitution makes clear that Congress has enormous leeway in determining how the judicial branch is run, and the JCOTUS was established in legislation passed by Congress in 1922. So, there's also an argument that McConnell and his colleagues are wrong. And we all know that pretty much every question these days ends up being answered by the Supreme Court. As chance would have it, the chair of the JCOTUS is... Chief Justice John Roberts. So, while we are hardly experts in administrative procedure, we think the odds are pretty good that the new anti-judge-shopping policy survives. (Z)