More troubling news for SCOTUSblog:
“This was a morning of ironies. At 9:30 a.m., six members of the blog staff were live-blogging the Supreme Court’s orders, followed by opinions at 10 a.m. There were 10,000 readers. The Standing Committee of Correspondents chose that time to release its ruling denying our appeal of its revocation of our press credential. We learned about it from Twitter.”
“Today, it settled on the fact that practicing lawyers publish and write for the blog. The Committee takes the view that the blog is not editorially independent from my law firm or from other lawyers who write for the blog. As a consequence, the Committee found, the blog violates two independent requirements under the Committee’s Rules: any credentialed publication must be editorially independent from an organization that (i) “lobbies the federal government”; or (ii) ‘is not principally a general news organization.'”
“Notably, the Committee finds that no editorial policy can establish editorial independence. The publication’s own rules cannot overcome the taint created by its personnel. So the Committee recognizes our rules forbidding any staff member from being involved in the coverage of any case in which the law firm is involved. But because the firm and the publication are not “separate” in terms of who works for each, the former has the capacity to “influenc[e] editorial content.” The Committee explains that it would reconsider its decision only if the blog were “to separate itself from Goldstein & Russell and any other lawyer or law firm who is arguing before the Supreme Court” (emphasis added) — Tom Goldstein
Bottom line: “The next step is for us to appeal the Committee’s decision to the Senate Rules Committee. We do not know how long that will take.” (see link above for full statement)
Disclosure: I am the book editor for SCOTUSblog. I have not, however, discussed this post or any other with anyone from SCOTUSblog.
