Friday round-up
on Apr 24, 2015 at 6:42 am
The upcoming arguments in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage continue to dominate commentary on the Court. At Reuters, Lawrence Hurley reports that “[t]wenty-eight of the country’s biggest financial firms had made an unprecedented show of unity in support of gay marriage by urging the court to strike down state laws banning same-sex unions.” In The New Republic, Brianne Gorod cites last Term’s decision in Riley v. California, holding that police cannot search an arrestee’s cellphone without a search warrant, and argues that, although “Congress and state legislatures may be able to supplement the Constitution’s protections . . . they cannot scrap them.” At Talking Points Memo, Sahil Kapur profiles Washington attorney Paul Smith, describing him as the “lawyer who set the stage for nationwide marriage equality.” At Slate, Tom Donnelly discusses the Fourteenth Amendment and the significance of edits to the proposed amendment that “paved the way” for same-sex marriage.
At the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Marcia Coyle reports on an amicus brief supporting the states filed by a group of international law scholars. At Conjugality, Walter Schumm and Jason Carroll reprint portions of the amicus brief that they filed, in which they argue that same-sex marriages will lead to a decline in fertility. And at The Daily Signal, Gene Schaerr discusses two amicus briefs which argue that “the man-woman definition of marriage simply does not implicate gays’ and lesbians’ personal liberty.”
Wednesday’s oral argument in Horne v. Department of Agriculture, in which the Justices are considering the Takings Clause and the government’s regulation of the raisin market, continues to spawn coverage and commentary. Coverage comes from David Savage of the Los Angeles Times, with commentary from Chris Kieser at the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog and Steven Mazie in The Economist (subscription or registration required).
The Court also issued one opinion on Wednesday, ruling in United States v. Wong and United States v. June that the time limits of the Federal Tort Claims Act are subject to equitable tolling. Coverage comes from Howard Wasserman for this blog and from Tony Mauro for the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), with commentary from Carl Smith at Procedurally Taxing.
Briefly:
- At the Blog of Legal Times, Tony Mauro reports that “Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court would be required to adopt a code of ethics under a bill introduced by several members of Congress on Thursday.”
- Elsewhere at the Blog of Legal Times (subscription or registration required), Mauro reports that retired Justice David Souter’s papers “will be available to the public . . . even further in the future than previously reported.”
- The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) urges the Court to grant cert. in O’Keefe v. Chisholm, “a Section 1983 civil-rights lawsuit brought by Wisconsin Club for Growth directorEric O’Keefe against Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm and other prosecutors [which] charges the prosecutors with a multi-year campaign to silence and intimidate conservative groups whose political speech they don’t like.”
- At the Northwestern University Law Review’s Online Content, J. Jonas Anderson and Peter Menell discuss the Court’s recent decision in Teva Pharmaceuticals v. Sandoz.
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