“Biden’s Supreme Court Promise Underscores A Reality: Black Women Rarely Get to The Federal Judiciary; Biden pledged to nominate the first Black woman for the US Supreme Court. The rest of the judiciary hasn’t fared much better in representing them or other women of color.” Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News has this report.

“‘Who Decides?’ Review: The Supreme Court, the States and the Contest for Control; Political conflicts, legal battles and overlapping claims set one level of government against another.” Online at The Wall Street Journal, law professor Josh Blackman has this review of Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton‘s new book, “Who Decides?: States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation.”

“Did You Know Reagan Picked Scalia for the Supreme Court Because He Was Italian? Some useful context for our current moment in Supreme Court–nomination politics.” Jordan Weissmann has this essay online at Slate.

“Who has more influence on supreme court: Clarence Thomas or his activist wife? Justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, sits on the board of conservative group that backs lawsuit seeking to end affirmative action, raising concerns it could present potential conflict of interest.” Ed Pilkington of The Guardian (UK) has this report.

“The internal jockeying begins as Biden selects his Supreme Court nominee”: Joan Biskupic of CNN has this news analysis.

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s library sells for nearly $2.4 million in auction”: Kevin Breuninger of CNBC has this report.

“Let’s Be Real: The Supreme Court Is Political and Always Has Been. And the public is just fine with that.” Jack Shafer has this essay online at Politico.

“Incoming Georgetown Law administrator apologizes after tweets dean called ‘appalling’; Ilya Shapiro is set to begin his role as senior lecturer and executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution on Feb. 1”: Lauren Lumpkin of The Washington Post has this report.

“Who is potential Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson? And the inside story behind her name. She has spoken about her upbringing, her family and her views on race.” Monica Dunn of ABC News has this report.

“Penn Law’s Amy Wax doubles down on racist comments, says she will not resign ‘without a fight'”: Jared Mitovich of The Daily Pennsylvanian has this report.

And Christine Charnosky of Law.com has an article headlined “‘I Wouldn’t Give Them the Satisfaction’: Penn Law Prof Amy Wax Says She Won’t Resign, Doubles Down on Comments About Black Students; ‘Blacks are not being represented at top of the class. Anyone who teaches law school knows this to be true,’ Wax said during a podcast interview Monday.”

Gad Saad has posted on YouTube episode 1368 of his “The Saad Truth” podcast, titled “My Chat with Law Professor and Neurologist Dr. Amy Wax.”

“The Lonely Liberal Minority: What can Stephen Breyer’s successor accomplish?” Irin Carmon has this post online at the “Intelligencer” blog of New York magazine.

Also online there, Jonathan Chait has a post titled “Biden Didn’t Invent Affirmative Action for the Supreme Court; Conservatives attack Biden for promising to appoint a Black woman.”

And Ed Kilgore has a post titled “Democrats Are Playing Catch-up on Supreme Court Nominations.”

“Handicapping President Biden’s Supreme Court Shortlist; Here are my odds on the leading contenders — and some interesting historical analysis”: David Lat has this post at his “Original Jurisdiction” Substack site.

And at BriefCatch, Ross Guberman has a post titled “Kruger Is to Roberts As Jackson Is to Sotomayor? An Opinion-Writing Faceoff.” [Update: Shortly after I published this post, Guberman removed this post from his site without any contemporaneous explanation. You can still access the post via Google’s cache at this link.] [Second update: The Google cache link no longer works either.]

“Justice Stephen Breyer to Retire”: You can access the new episode of the “Advisory Opinions” podcast, featuring David French and Sarah Isgur, via this link.

“Breyer leaves a court more conservative than one he joined”: Jessica Gresko of The Associated Press has this report.

“Pennsylvania court strikes down expansive mail-in voting law”: Marc Levy of The Associated Press has a report that begins, “A statewide court on Friday declared that Pennsylvania’s expansive two-year-old mail-in voting law is unconstitutional, agreeing with challenges by Republicans who soured on mail-in voting after then-President Donald Trump began baselessly attacking it as rife with fraud in 2020’s campaign.”

You can access today’s 3-to-2 en banc ruling of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania at this link.

“The carping over Biden’s Supreme Court pledge is historically inaccurate and racially tinged”: Columnist Ruth Marcus has this op-ed in today’s edition of The Washington Post.

“11th Circuit vacates previous ruling on Alabama’s abortion consent bypass law; The 11th Circuit vacated its previous ruling that found parts of Alabama’s abortion consent bypass law unconstitutional; In a two-page notice released Thursday, the court granted a petition for rehearing the case en banc”: Kirk McDaniel of Courthouse News Service has this report on an order granting rehearing en banc that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued yesterday.

You can access the now-vacated three-judge panel’s ruling at this link.

“With shadow docket, Supreme Court puts Band-Aids on a bullet hole; The justices are creating a new approach to solving urgent matters but it’s just the first battle in a longer war”: Kelsey Reichmann of Courthouse News Service has this report.

“I once told a Supreme Court justice that affirmative action got me into Harvard and Yale. Today they wouldn’t listen.” Law professor Paul Butler has this op-ed in today’s edition of The Washington Post.

“Comeback Kid”: You can access the new episode of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast, featuring law professors Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw, via this link.

And in related news, Todd Spangler of Variety reports that “Crooked Media Makes First Podcast Acquisitions: ‘Strict Scrutiny’ and ‘Hot Take.’“

“The Supreme Court Appears Ready, Finally, to Defeat Affirmative Action; Moderate conservative Justices voted with liberals to protect the program in the past, but there are no such Justices now”: Nicholas Lemann has this Daily Comment online at The New Yorker.

“Is Justice Breyer’s exit politics or pragmatism?” Robert Barnes of The Washington Post has this report.

“Biden’s Supreme Court Risk; If he chooses a radical to replace Breyer, it will stimulate GOP turnout in November”: Columnist Kimberley A. Strassel will have this op-ed in Friday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal.

“Stephen Breyer’s Loss to the Supreme Court: The pragmatic liberal’s replacement may come from the new legal left.” This editorial will appear in Friday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal.

“Recovering a Conservative State Legal Theory; Conservative jurisprudence has a long and unfortunate history of ignoring state power”: Jeffrey Bristol has this post at the “Law & Liberty” blog.

“The Willful Naïveté of Stephen Breyer”: Jeff Shesol has this guest essay online at The New York Times.

“New Justice Will Have Little Power to Thwart Supreme Court’s Rightward Lurch; The replacement of Justice Stephen G. Breyer with another liberal is unlikely to alter the basic dynamic at the court or to slow its accelerating conservative ambitions”: Adam Liptak of The New York Times has this report.

“What Conservatives Really Mean When They Say Biden’s Potential SCOTUS Nominees Are ‘Unqualified'”: Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern have this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

“One U.S. Circuit Court Is Breaking Every Rule in the Book to Push Its Radical Agenda”: Brianne Gorod has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

“If the Supreme Court bans affirmative action, it continues the U.S. legacy of racial discrimination”: Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky has this essay online at The Los Angeles Times.

“Biden’s Pledge To Nominate A Black Woman Justice Is Big Test Of The Left’s Organizing Power Around The Courts; Groups that fought Trump’s nominees are hoping to build on that momentum to support what’s expected to be a historic Supreme Court pick by Biden”: Zoe Tillman and Nidhi Prakash of BuzzFeed News have this report.

“Statements from the Supreme Court Regarding Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s Retirement”: The Public Information Office of the U.S. Supreme Court has posted these statements online.

“The Practical Erudition of Stephen Breyer: The eloquent former Eagle Scout quoted Oscar Wilde, believed in pragmatism, understood Congress, oozed decency, and wanted the law to work for people.” Law professor Garrett Epps has this essay online at Washington Monthly.

“Ilya Shapiro, on Heels of Georgetown Law Hiring, Tweets That Biden’s SCOTUS Pick Will Be a ‘Lesser Black Woman’; Shapiro’s ‘tweets are at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law and are damaging to the culture of equity and inclusion that Georgetown Law is building every day,’ Georgetown Law Dean William M. Treanor wrote in a statement to Law.com on Thursday”: Christine Charnosky of Law.com has this report.

“Recalling Breyer’s Quirky Hypotheticals and Epic Questions: Justice Breyer livened up oral arguments with odd hypotheticals and rambling questions that kept advocates on their toes.” Tony Mauro has this post at his “The Marble Palace Blog.”