I'm Elizabeth Slattery and welcome to SCOTUS 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This is a special summer session edition of SCOTUS 101, and today I'm joined by David Latt, the founder of Above the Law.

David, welcome to SCOTUS 101.

Thanks for having me, Elizabeth.

So you followed Supreme Court nominations very closely, and in fact, you predicted

President Trump would select either Brett Kavanaugh or Raymond Kethledge just hours after Kennedy's

retirement was announced.

So what's your secret?

Do you have Don McGahn on speed dial?

I am grateful for my many sources on this beat,

but in some ways, this was a very logical pick.

And I think probably many observers of the court

and the nominations process would have tagged Judge Brett Kavanaugh as a top contender.

Definitely.

He was who I was rooting for.

So before we get into more about Judge Kavanaugh, I want to briefly turn to another nomination, one that unfortunately failed.

So last week, the White House withdrew the nomination of Ryan Bounds to the Ninth Circuit.

On the afternoon, the Senate was scheduled to hold its confirmation vote.

It's been widely reported that Republican senators Tim Scott and Marco Rubio raised last-minute

objections to Ryan Bounds after they had already voted to invoke cloture and proceed to the

confirmation vote.

So their objections centered on a couple of articles Bounds wrote for the student newspaper at

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