Wednesday round-up

Coverage of and commentary on the Courts health care decision showed no signs of slowing yesterday. In an op-ed for The Cap Times in Madison, Wisconsin, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson of that states supreme court argues that critics have largely ignored the first four pages of the chief justices decision which, she contends, lay out basic principles [that] should guide fair, neutral, impartial and nonpartisan judges. At ABC News, Ariane de Vogue writes that with leaks coming so soon after [the] major decision . . . the [C]ourt itself no longer feels like such an impregnable fortress.

Other coverage of the Court focuses on an emergency application filed yesterday by Warren Hill, a Georgia death row inmate, who argues that he should not be executed because he is mentally retarded. Ariane de Vogue of ABC News has coverage of the filing; at ACSblog, Jeremy Leaming argues that both Georgia and Texas remain seemingly oblivious to Supreme Court precedent or obstinately opposed to providing those on death row a proper hearing.

Justice Scalias new book with legal writing guru Bryan Garner also continues to garner coverage. At the Opinionator blog of The New York Times, Stanley Fish reviews the book, describing it as wonderful but also wrong in its main polemical thesis. And at his LAWnLinguistics blog, Neal Goldfarb devotes a four-part series to the book.

This blogs online symposium on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum continues with posts from Oona Hathaway and Tyler Giannini and Susan Farbstein. And at her On The Case blog for Reuters, Alison Frankel discusses questions raised by the petitioners about the governments amicus brief in the case.

As Lyle reported on Monday, a new cert. petition challenging the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act has been filed by an eighty-three-year-old New York resident. Nicole Flatow of ACSblog and Ruthann Robson of Constitutional Law Prof Blog have additional coverage.

Briefly:

• At the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr discusses a recent cert. petition which asks the Court to weigh in on whether the Constitution requires that an insanity defense be available. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C. serves as counsel to the petitioner in the case.]