WJI's Daily Reads for May 9, 2022

Reuters: Retired judge Richard Posner sued for payment regarding short-lived Posner Center for Justice for Pro Se's.

DCist: Fencing and concrete barriers installed around U.S. Supreme Court building.

By Wednesday evening, after two days of demonstrations, workers had begun constructing a “non-scalable,” eight-foot-tall fence around the Supreme Court building, according to NBC, similar to the fencing that surrounded the Capitol for six months following the Jan. 6 insurrection. ...

Despite the ominous optics of the black metal fence and concrete slabs, the demonstrations at the Supreme Court this week have been largely peaceful — prompting criticism of the fencing as perhaps more symbolic than practical. (Some pointed out an apparent hypocrisy in the Court’s protection; in 2014, the Court struck down a law that would have added a buffer zone around clinics that provide abortion services, ruling it impeded on protesters’ First Amendment rights.)  And while it’s the first time in recent years this level of security has been installed around the Supreme Court, Washingtonians are now no strangers to barricades and troops in their home city.

Grid: Other instances of the Supreme Court ruling contrary to public opinion.

A 2021 study found that Americans, by and large, have become more liberal since the 1990s, but six of the Supreme Court justices are staunch conservatives. “We’re going to start to see a court that’s deciding cases out of step with public opinion, and that’s something we haven’t really seen in a long time in this country,” (political scientist Michael J.) Nelson said.

With the court stacked heavily in the GOP’s favor, Nelson expects more decisions to come that will cause an uproar with the American public.

Vox: Warnings about the loss of Supreme Court legitimacy.

The New York Times: Secretive teams within U.S. Border Patrol to be disbanded.

The elimination of the teams was announced Friday in a Customs and Border Protection memo. The decision, according to the memo from Chris Magnus, the agency’s commissioner, was made “to ensure our agency achieves the highest levels of accountability.”

Mr. Magnus, a former police chief, came into the job late last year with a reputation for changing up police department operations to restore public trust. Disbanding the teams — which for decades operated with little to no public awareness — is one of his first significant policy changes at the Border Patrol, which has long been criticized as lacking accountability.​

Reuters: Shareholder lawsuit challenges Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter.