Friday round-up
on Sep 23, 2011 at 11:10 am
On Sunday, Justice Scalia will celebrate his twenty-fifth anniversary on the Court. One of the Justice’s former law clerks, Ed Whelan, commemorates the occasion in a Bench Memo at the National Review Online.  While speaking on the Senate floor to commemorate the event, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah described the Justice as “the Justice liberals love to hate.  If this were a Harry Potter movie, liberals would put Justice Scalia on a wanted poster as ‘Undesirable No. 1.’”  On Saturday, Justice Scalia will speak at Duquesne University School of Law; the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and Duquesne itself have details.
After the Court refused to stay his execution, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis late Wednesday night. (Yesterday’s early coverage of the event can be found in Kiran’s Thursday’s round-up.) ABC News has a comprehensive overview of the proceedings in the case, including at the Court, while CNN’s American Morning, NPR’s The Two-Way blog, New York Magazine, the Associated Press (via the Chicago Tribune), the Christian Post, Reuters, and USA Today also have coverage.
In the Atlantic, Brian Resnick explains that the Court “couldn’t save Troy Davis†because “it wasn’t the Court’s job to exonerate Davisâ€: “while lingering doubt may seem like a powerful enough reason to stay an execution, in the intricately complicated world of the justice system, it’s just not enough.â€Â And in an op-ed for the New York Times, Dahlia Lithwick and Lisa McElroy argue that “the real crime on Wednesday night was the action — or really the lack of action, the absolute radio silence — of the United States Supreme Court, which, as the nation watched and waited, did nothing for 203 minutes past the scheduled execution time.†Finally, Ariane de Vogue of ABC News surveys some of the Justices’ views on the death penalty.
The Court also declined to stay the execution of Derrick O. Mason, an Alabama death row inmate convicted of killing a store clerk in 1994. The Associated Press (via the Houston Chronicle and the Washington Post), Alabama Live, and Fox News provide coverage.
On Thursday, an equally divided Second Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc filed by the federal government.  The petition sought review of a three-judge panel decision, which held that attorneys have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would broaden the ability of U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor overseas communications without a warrant. In her dissenting opinion, Judge Reena Raggi urged the Court to take up the issue. Wired News and the ACLU Lens Blog provide coverage. At the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr observes that the concurring and dissenting opinions in the case make it “an excellent prospect for Supreme Court review,†but he also expresses some doubt in light of the fact that the case is a facial, rather than as-applied, challenge.
