4 Comments

This is such a great offering. I'm a very ordinary citizen who grew up after the civil rights movements. To me, it's so important to understand the Supreme Court. I thought of it as comprised of wise men (and now women) but had no real understanding of Law or how the decisions were made. I can't thank you enough for this opportunity. I think of your work as like the Historian Heather Cox Richardson, a light in the plethora of confusion, misunderstanding and outright lies consuming us all today.

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Another wonderful issue. Thank you. I would really like to see a discussion of the 1988 amendments. That was more than a decade after I graduated from law school and somehow it I missed it. Perhaps because I was an attorney for a government agency and many of our cases made it up there, whether we wanted to see that or not.

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Steve, your reference to " a controversial 2016 CAAF decision about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, even though former Solicitor General Paul Clement was lead counsel for the petitioner.," appears to be referring to Sterling v. U.S., a USMC, case. "Controversy" I guess is in the eye of the beholder, but IMHO, it was anything but. I authored an Amicus Brief "In Support of Neither Party" objecting to certiorari as there were significant preservation and procedural issues permeating the case. Paul Clement--a brilliant appellate counsel--was boxed into a corner with respect to the RFRA issue, as the Petitioner had never made any requests for religious "accommodations" prior to her court-martial.

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When I saw the "Golden CAAF," I was hoping that we oldtimers would get our military justice acronym pun due. So glad to have that hope paid off in the footnote shoutout to good ol' "CoMA." The prior name reinforces your excellent argument that the SCOTUS appeals from the military justice system need resuscitating. Call a Code Blue to remedy a Code Red.

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