“Senate confirms Bradley N. Garcia to appeals court in DC; DOJ official is the first Latino judge on the court that hears cases with a national sweep on environment, labor and other policies”: Ryan Tarinelli of Roll Call has this report.

This evening, the U.S. Senate confirmed Bradley N. Garcia to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by a vote of 53-to-40.

“Supreme Court Takes Up Case on Trump Hotel Records; The justices will decide whether individual House Democrats have standing to sue for documents concerning possible conflicts of interest”: Adam Liptak of The New York Times has this report, along with an article headlined “Supreme Court to Consider South Carolina Voting Map Ruled a Racial Gerrymander; A unanimous three-judge panel found that a congressional voting district anchored in Charleston, S.C., violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.”

“The Supreme Court outlawed split juries, but hundreds remain in prison anyway”: Jason Breslow of NPR has this report.

“Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law gets beaten up on GOP campaign trail”: Marc Levy of The Associated Press has a report that begins, “Election integrity and Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law are prominent subjects in the state’s Republican primary contest for an open state Supreme Court seat, as Donald Trump continues to baselessly claim that the 2020 election was stolen.”

“Connecticut high court nominee regrets signing 2017 letter supporting Amy Coney Barrett”: Dave Collins of The Associated Press has this report.

“16 Crucial Words That Went Missing From a Landmark Civil Rights Law; The phrase, seemingly deleted in error, undermines the basis for qualified immunity, the legal shield that protects police officers from suits for misconduct”: Adam Liptak will have this new installment of his “Sidebar” column in Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times.

“GOP state lawmakers try to restrict ballot initiatives, partly to thwart abortion protections”: Julie Carr Smyth of The Associated Press has this report.

“How the Supreme Court might view the debt limit fight: A debt-ceiling deadlock could push Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment — setting up a showdown at the high court.” Betsy Woodruff Swan of Politico has this report.

“Memos show how Supreme Court justices scramble at the end of the session”: Joan Biskupic of CNN has this news analysis.

“27. Why I Wrote (and Hope You’ll Read) a Book About the ‘Shadow Docket’: With publication day coming tomorrow, a personal reflection on trying to make the more technical side of the Court’s history, output, and impact more accessible to lawyers and non-lawyers alike.” Steve Vladeck has this post at his “One First” Substack site.

And at his “Law Dork” Substack site, Chris Geidner has a post titled “The Law Dork Q&A with The Shadow Docket author Steve Vladeck: Why a book on the shadow docket? ‘Because there hasn’t been one before.’ Why the SCOTUS shadow docket matters, and when everything changed.”

“What’s Going on So Far This Term”: Adam Feldman has this post at his “Empirical SCOTUS” blog.

“The Real Scandal Surrounding Clarence Thomas’s Gifts: Supreme Court Justices, alone in our system, are not truly regulated by anyone other than themselves.” Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen has this Comment in the Talk of the Town section of the May 22, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.

And in that same issue, Gersen also has a Books essay titled “The Dark Side of Defamation Law: A revered Supreme Court ruling protected the robust debate vital to democracy — but made it harder to constrain misinformation; Can we do better?“