“What Is Stare Decisis, and Why Is It Intellectually Hollow Bullshit? There are no rules for when the Supreme Court can overturn its precedent. There is only the question of whether there are five votes to do it.” Elie Mystal has this post at Balls and Strikes.

“Two New Papers to SSRN: Gaming Certiorari and Civil Rights Litigation in the Lower Courts.” Aaron L. Nielson has this post at the “Notice & Comment” blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation.

In today’s mail: I received a copy of Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton‘s new book, “Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation.”

“To Rein In the Police, Look to the States, Not the Court”: Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky has this guest essay online at The New York Times.

“A Plan Forms in Mexico: Help Americans Get Abortions; Mexican activists plan to provide women in Texas and other U.S. states with information, support — and abortion-inducing pills.” Natalie Kitroeff of The New York Times has this report.

“Eight challenges brought to high court over vaccine-or-test mandate at OSHA; The appeals come only days after the Sixth Circuit reinstated the government agency’s directive for private employers to make workers either get the coronavirus vaccine or test weekly”: Kelsey Reichmann of Courthouse News Service has this report.

“The Rio Grande Valley’s Abortion Desert: Texas’s new law is the culmination of decades of legal restrictions and budget cuts that have left women in one of the country’s poorest regions with scant access to abortion.” Stephania Taladrid has this Dispatch online at The New Yorker.

“A Fight to Die: Sandy Morris, in the grip of ALS, wants to expand access to aid in dying so ending her life won’t be a crime.” Esmé E Deprez has this article in the current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek.

“The alternative to Supreme Court enlargement is surrender”: Columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. has this op-ed in today’s edition of The Washington Post.

“Long after the courts shut down for covid, the pain of delayed justice lingers”: Griff Witte and Mark Berman of The Washington Post have this report.

“Biden has installed a significant number of judges from diverse backgrounds — now comes the hard part; The pace reflects an urgency from the Biden White House and Democratic senators to make up ground lost to Republicans who prioritized filling the judiciary with conservatives during the Trump presidency”: Seung Min Kim and Ann E. Marimow have this front page article in today’s edition of The Washington Post.

And at “The Volokh Conspiracy,” Jonathan H. Adler has a post titled “How Big a Mark Will President Biden Make on the Federal Judiciary? The Biden Administration is off to a fast start nominating and appointing federal judges, but will this continue?“

“Democrats walk on eggshells around Breyer as GOP plans another blockade for any Biden Supreme Court pick”: Edward-Isaac Dovere and Manu Raju of CNN have this report.

“The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court failed the president”: Law professor Scott Douglas Gerber has this essay online at The Hill.

“The idea of expanding the Supreme Court to blunt its right-wing bias gains traction”: Columnist Michael Hiltzik has this essay online at The Los Angeles Times.

“Lawyer diversity effort gets cold shoulder from Florida Supreme Court”: Karen Sloan of Reuters has this report on a per curiam decision that the Supreme Court of Florida issued Thursday.

“Court-packing is not the answer to this problem”: Columnist Ruth Marcus has this essay online at The Washington Post.

“F.D.A. Will Permanently Allow Abortion Pills by Mail; The decision will broaden access to medication abortion, an increasingly common method, but many conservative states are already mobilizing against it”: Pam Belluck of The New York Times has this report.

Laurie McGinley and Katie Shepherd of The Washington Post report that “FDA eliminates key restriction on abortion pill as Supreme Court weighs case that challenges Roe v. Wade; The agency did away with a rule that required patients to pick up the drug at hospitals, clinics or doctors’ offices.”

And Stephanie Armour of The Wall Street Journal reports that “FDA Allows Women to Get Abortion Pill by Mail; The decision lifted a restriction requiring women to go to a medical office or hospital to pick up the mifepristone pills.”

“Biden Should Make Stephen Breyer an Offer He Can’t Refuse; The 83-year-old Supreme Court justice has resisted calls for his retirement; But what if he had a better job offer to consider?” Adam Cohen has this post at Balls and Strikes.

“God Save the United States”: At “Dorf on Law,” Sherry F. Colb has a blog post that begins, “I have lately been thinking about the world that our newly constituted Supreme Court will leave to us.”

“Gorsuch’s Crusade Against Vaccine Mandates Could Topple a Pillar of Public Health”: Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern have this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

“Populism Has Found a Home at the Supreme Court, Too”: Law professors Anya Bernstein and Glen Staszewski have this guest essay online at The New York Times.

“The current Supreme Court’s partisan moment rivals Bush v. Gore”: Joan Biskupic of CNN has this news analysis.

“Supreme Court sends Texas abortion case to appeals court instead of to judge who previously blocked the law”: Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow of The Washington Post have this report.

And Ariane de Vogue of CNN reports that “Gorsuch deals abortion providers another setback by sending Texas SB8 lawsuit to a conservative appeals court.”

“The Supreme Court, Weaponized”: Linda Greenhouse has this essay online at The New York Times.

“En Banc Review Needs To Be Curtailed; The procedure is unnecessary except in rare situations anyway, and it defeats the purpose of randomly selecting judges and politicizes the courts”: Dilan Esper has this post at his Substack site.

“Report: 11 executions in 2021 mark three-decade low.” Michael Tarm of The Associated Press has this article.

“Wisconsin attorney general won’t enforce any abortion ban”: Scott Bauer of The Associated Press has this report.

“3rd Circuit’s Ambro to take senior status, giving Biden third vacancy”: Nate Raymond of Reuters has this report.

“Biden set to surpass Trump in first-year judicial nominees; a window into a major Democratic push”: Phil Mattingly of CNN has this report.

“Seven Years of Trying to Fix the Supreme Court: After seven years of trying, Fix the Court is chalking up fixes that are coming to fruition at the Supreme Court.” Tony Mauro has this post at his “The Marble Palace Blog.”

“Elites at Cert”: Adam Feldman has this post at his “Empirical SCOTUS” blog.

“6th Circuit Denies Initial En Banc Review of OSHA Vaccine-or-Test Mandate; Judge Jeffrey Sutton dissented, saying the case is ‘suitable for an extraordinary procedure'”: Avalon Zoppo of The National Law Journal has this report on today’s order (accompanied by a concurrence and two dissents) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denying en banc review by an evenly divided vote.

And in other coverage, at “The Volokh Conspiracy,” Jonathan H. Adler has a post titled “Sixth Circuit Refuses to Hear Challenges to OSHA Vaccinate-or-Test Rule En Banc; A majority of judges on the court did not vote in favor of the petitions for initial hearing en banc, so the challenge will be heard by a three-judge panel.”

And Josh Blackman has a post titled “Sixth Circuit Splits 8-8 on Initial En Banc in OSHA Vaccine Cases; The three judges who did not sign an opinion may be on the three-judge panel: Gibbons, Griffith, and Stranch.”

“Ghislaine Maxwell’s judge, up for appellate court promotion, faces U.S. Senate panel”: Nate Raymond of Reuters has this report.

And Tom McParland of New York Law Journal reports that “Nathan Faces Grilling From Republican Senators in Hearing for 2nd Circuit Nomination; ‘I gave that up,’ Nathan said when pressed about her experience as a lawyer in the Obama administration and in Democratic politics.”

You can view the video of today’s U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing via this link.

“Newsom’s Texas-style gun ploy is an emotionally satisfying, and very bad, idea”: This editorial appears in today’s edition of The Los Angeles Times.

“What I Got Wrong About Brett Kavanaugh and Abortion: The justice had sounded eager to prevent states from nullifying constitutional rights. Why did he change his mind?” Mark Joseph Stern has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.