Friday round-up
on May 23, 2014 at 9:13 am
Briefly:
- At The Atlantic, Dahlia Lithwick reviews Scalia: A Court of One, a new book on Justice Antonin Scalia by Bruce Murphy. She acknowledges that “Murphy may be correct that Scalia is a court of one.” “But,” she added, “in the religious-rights revival now in progress in America, one is perhaps all that is needed.
- At Forbes, Rich Samp criticizes the amicus brief filed by the federal government at the Court’s request in Medtronic v. Stengel, a case involving medical devices and preemption. Samp contends that the brief is “another example of just how committed the Administration is to [its] mutually beneficial friendship” with the plaintiffs’ bar.
- At Reason.com, Damon Root discusses Justice Scalia’s role as “a . . . surprising ally” in the recent decision by a federal judge in Pennsylvania striking down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
- In an essay for the Harvard Law Review, Alan Meese and Nathan Oman dispute the argument, advanced by the federal government in the challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate, “treating corporations as RFRA persons that exercise their shareholders’ religion contradicts basic principles of corporate law and would undermine that law’s goals.”
- In an op-ed for the Chicago Sun-Times, Congressman Mike Quigley contends that the Court should “end its antiquated practice of banning video cameras and live audio recordings of oral arguments and use every tool available to preserve America’s judicial history.”
- At the National Journal, Norm Ornstein renews his argument in favor of term limits for the Justices. He contends that, “[i]f we could combine term limits for justices with a sensitivity by presidents to find some judges who actually understand the real world of politics and life, and not just the cloistered one of the bench, we might get somewhere.”
- At Harmless Error, Luke Rioux has a detailed description of the proceedings that led up to the Court’s order Wednesday night staying the lethal injection of a Missouri death row inmate, Russell Bucklew.
