Friday round-up
on Sep 19, 2014 at 9:06 am
Briefly:
- At Re’s Judicata, Richard Re discusses Tuesday’s comments by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggesting that the Court might decline to grant any of the pending petitions challenging state bans on same-sex marriage because there is currently no division among the circuits. (Lyle also covered those comments in a post yesterday for this blog.)
- At The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Steven Mazie reports on the unusual alliance of amici in Young v. UPS, in which the Court will consider the scope of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, but observes that “the ideological overlap, while intriguing, is no guarantee that justices will reach consensus.”
- At ACSblog, Adam Winkler cites the extent to which the Court has adhered to Alexander Bickel’s “passive virtues” in the context of its jurisprudence on equal rights for gays and lesbians to support his argument that we shouldn’t “be surprised if the Court stays out of the fray – at least until there is a circuit split. A Court known for its bold assertions of judicial supremacy may be seeing that a passive virtues approach minimizes controversy.”
- On Saturday at 6 p.m., C-SPAN Radio will air the latest installment of its series on historic Supreme Court arguments, focusing on the oral argument in Zivotofsky v. Clinton, the first round of litigation involving a challenge by a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem to the State Department’s refusal to list “Israel” as his place of birth on his passport, and what it might mean for the upcoming argument in Zivotofsky v. Kerry.
- ProPublica has an overview of the state of play in voting rights around the country in the wake of the Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, striking down the formula used to determine which state and local governments must comply with the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirement.
- The Cato Institute has published its Supreme Court Review, containing articles that look back at the major cases of the October Term 2013 and one that looks forward at the upcoming Term.
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