Ruth Marcus
speaker
58 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Ruth Marcus’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
There is some authority that I'm not an expert on for the Secretary of State to kind of declare you to be someone we don't want in this country. But as a general matter, it has always been understood that people who are here legally, even if they are not citizens of the United States, enjoy protections under the First Amendment.
It depends on which authority the government is using. It's going to be a lot harder with the cases that involve the Secretary of State's kind of unilateral authority. But as a general matter, to say that individuals who engaged in pro-Palestinian demonstrations— saying things that you and I, as American citizens, would be allowed to say are somehow no longer entitled to stay in this country.
I think we've seen the lower courts say, whoa, do not send him back. Do not send her back. We have to take a much closer look at this. And so I think they have a reasonable chance of being permitted to stay.
I thought that comment really encapsulated everything that is wrong about the Pam Bondi slash Trump lawyer view of the world. If someone is aggrieved and has standing to sue and an argument, they go to court and they get a hearing. That is not an indication of a constitutional crisis in our system. It's an indication of our constitution working.
You know, if you don't like a court order, there's a solution to it. You appeal it. You don't ignore it. You don't tell the judge he's out of line or he should remove himself from your case or anything else. She's not arguing to the American people. I think she is, like so many people in the Trump administration, arguing to an audience of one.
Well, we've seen a few cases so far where the chief justice has not aligned himself with the other conservatives. We've seen a few cases where either the chief justice or the chief justice joined by Justice Barrett or Justice Barrett by herself, Justice Barrett being one of the three Trump appointees there. But she's turned out to have a quite interesting independent streak there.
But when you have a six-justice conservative majority, that means that you have a justice to spare. We're going to see the degree to which the conservative justices are offended, appalled, concerned—find your verb— by the extremeness of the administration's position.
And as we get past some of the hurdles to getting to the merits, we'll see whether they agree with the administration on things like birthright citizenship or the congressional power of the purse or things like that, where the administration is on the weakest legal footing.
I think Justices Thomas and Alito are completely reliable. Justice Gorsuch, it depends on the particular case before him. For example, he has been much more supportive of trans rights, and those are the most reliable three. And then you have, I would think, in order, Justice Kavanaugh, the Chief Justice and Justice Barrett.
And then there's this very interesting kind of four female justice group that is creating itself, not in all cases, but in some cases where you have the three liberal justices who are all women joining with Justice Barrett and then looking for a fifth.
I think they are. What happened? Well, one thing that happened is maybe Chief Justice Roberts is no Chief Justice Earl Warren. But the court has also changed.
Well, weaker, but Chief Justice Earl Warren was famously able to help the Brown Court to become a unanimous court and issue a unanimous ruling. In Brown v. Board of Education. Chief Justice Roberts may not have that kind of persuasive power with his colleagues, but he also has different colleagues. And especially when his majority went from five to six, that didn't enhance his power.
It weakened his power because it meant that he was a little bit disposable for the other justices. And by the way, some of them are really angry at him for, you know, alleged perfidy on his part to do things like vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act case. So they're not inclined necessarily to go along with him if he says, which they wouldn't say this directly, this one's really important to me.
No, I think that happens. And I think, you know, if we look at the evolution, maybe too strong a word for it, but because Justice Barrett has not been on the court for that long, but her profile has changed over the years from a justice who is reliably, reliably in the conservative camp to a justice who is conservative and
but a less reliable conservative vote than the justices on the end of the spectrum. Well, I think some people would say that Justice Elena Kagan did a really good job of convincing her and finding alliances with her. And a lot of times, you know, when you're writing a story with somebody, if you disagree about a word, maybe you could find a third word.
Maybe you could go along with their word on some other thing. And so sometimes, Strategic justices make alliances and sometimes pull their punches on things that they would say in order to get another justice to come along with them. And I think, you know, behind the scenes, that is something that it appears is happening with Justice Barrett.
I think it might be easier to cover the Vatican than to cover the Supreme Court. It's like Plato's cave, and you're just reading, you know, maybe you'll find somebody who has talked to somebody who has talked to somebody, so you'll hear something.
There's not a ton of people who either know what they're talking about, nine really know what they're talking about, or who are willing to talk to you about it.
There's nothing even close to precedent.
Several law firms have been subject to different versions of this same order, but it basically says— because I don't like the things that you've been doing, here are things that you can no longer do. You can no longer go into government buildings. You can no longer meet with government officials. That is lawyers bread and butter. Hi, can I get a meeting to talk about these tariffs?
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