Federal Judiciary

Florida Supreme Court says Gov. DeSantis must appoint new Justice by Monday (UPDATED)

 Read the unanimous opinion here.

UPDATE -- while DeSantis lost this battle, he won a big one in the en banc 11th Circuit.  William Pryor writes the majority opinion backing DeSantis' position that felons cannot vote until they have paid all court costs, fees, etc.  Judges Jordan, Martin, and Jill Pryor all write dissents.  Judge Jordan's ends this way:

Our predecessor, the former Fifth Circuit, has been rightly praised for its landmark decisions on voting rights in the 1950s and 1960s. See generally Jack Bass, Unlikely Heroes: The Dramatic Story of the Southern Judges Who Translated the Supreme Court?s Brown Decision Into a Revolution for Equality 259?77 (1981). I doubt that today?s decision?which blesses Florida?s neutering of Amendment 4?will be viewed as kindly by history.

Pryor responds like this:

I write separately to explain a difficult truth about the nature of the judicial role. Our dissenting colleagues predict that our decision will not be ?viewed as kindly by history? as the voting-rights decisions of our heroic predecessors. Jordan Dissent at 189 (citing Jack Bass, Unlikely Heroes: The Dramatic Story of the Southern Judges Who Translated the Supreme Court?s Brown Decision Into a Revolution for Equality (1981)). But the ?heroism? that the Constitution demands of judges?modeled so well by our predecessors?is that of ?devotion to the rule of law and basic morality.? Patrick E. Higginbotham, Conceptual Rigor: A Cabin for the Rhetoric of Heroism, 59 Tex. L. Rev. 1329, 1332 (1981) (reviewing Bass, Unlikely Heroes, supra). As a distinguished colleague presciently warned decades ago, there is a ?genuine risk? that later judges will ?easily misunderstand? this lesson. Id. Our duty is not to reach the outcomes we think will please whomever comes to sit on the court of human history. The Constitution instead tasks us with ?administering the rule of law in courts of limited jurisdiction,? id. at 1343, which means that we must respect the political decisions made by the people of Florida and their officials within the bounds of our Supreme Law, regardless of whether we agree with those decisions. And in the end, as our judicial oath acknowledges, we will answer for our work to the Judge who sits outside of human history.

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on September 11, 2020 (boomark / email).