WJI's Daily Reads for June 30, 2022

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Teen charged with Mayfair Mall shooting now to be waived into adult court.

YouTube: Video of Ketanji Brown Jackson's swearing in as U.S. Supreme Court justice.

The Guardian: U.S. Supreme Court guts ability of Environmental Protection Agency to combat climate change.

Not only was this case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and which would have imposed obligations on the energy sector that it would have met regardless. It also involves two legal doctrines that are not mentioned in the constitution, and that most scholars agree have no basis in any federal statute.

However, the supreme court has sided with West Virginia, a major coal mining state, which argued that “unelected bureaucrats” at the EPA should not be allowed to reshape its economy by limiting pollution – even though emissions from coal are helping cause worsening flooding, heatwaves and droughts around the world, as well as killing millions of people through toxic air.

CNN: U.S. Supreme Court allows Biden Administration to end "remain in Mexico" policy.

Biden's bid to terminate the program had been challenged in court by a coalition of red states led by Texas that argued that ending it ran afoul of immigration law. They also argued that (the) administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act -- which requires that agencies take certain procedural steps when implementing policy -- in how it went about unwinding the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.

SCOTUSblog: U.S. Supreme Court expands state jurisdiction to prosecute crimes on reservations.

On Wednesday, the court reversed the presumption against state jurisdiction, holding that unless Congress acts to preempt state jurisdiction, states can prosecute non-Indians for all crimes committed in Indian country. 

Slate: Attacks on civil servants are a common theme in recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

These attacks have dire downstream effects. They allow the justices to substitute their own preferences and policies for those of scientists, lawyers, environmental regulators, and public health experts, who across state, local, and federal government have decades more expertise than a federal judge can ever hope to have. In the process, it also allows them to add to the simmering public distrust of institutions and agencies, and to locate public trust only in the justices themselves and the citizen vigilantes who come to believe that they should enforce laws themselves.

Above the Law: Ginni Thomas backtracks on talking with the Jan. 6 committee.

The Hill: Michigan Supreme Court overturns Flint-water-crisis indictments against former governor and other state officials on procedural grounds.

“The Citizens of Flint should know that these cases are not over. Public commentary to the contrary is presumptive and rash. Our reading is that the Court’s opinion interprets the one-man grand jury process to require charges to be filed at the district court and include a preliminary examination,” Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud said in a statement.

“Our team is prepared to move forward through that process. We relied upon settled law and the well-established prosecutorial tool of the one-man grand jury, used for decades, to bring forward charges against the nine defendants in the Flint water crisis. We still believe these charges can and will be proven in court.”