Tuesday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Apr 14, 2015 at 7:04 am

The oral arguments in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage are now just two weeks away.  Writing for this blog, Lyle Denniston continues his series previewing the oral arguments with a post on the briefs filed by the states defending the bans.  An amicus brief filed in support of the states by “same-sex attracted men and their wives” drew commentary from Mark Joseph Stern, who at Slate contends that “[t]here are a lot of terrible arguments against same-sex marriage, but this may be the worst,” and coverage from Curtis M. Wong at The Huffington Post.  At Balkinization, David Gans discusses originalism and same-sex marriage, arguing that the “Framers made a conscious decision to write the Fourteenth Amendment as a broad guarantee of equality for all, preventing majorities in the states from discriminating against any person or group of persons.” 

Adam Liptak of The New York Times recently reported on the dearth of major law firms supporting the states in the case; Austin Ruse discusses that article at Breitbart.  And in an op-ed for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, John Paul Schnapper-Casteras outlines “three key reasons” why, in his view, the Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia, striking down that state’s ban on interracial marriage, “remains deeply relevant to the current question of same-sex marriage.”

Briefly:

• At the Blog of Legal Times (subscription required), Tony Mauro reports that “[a] Native American group has gone to court to shine light on a purported “confession of error” by then-acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal in 2011 in which he said his office made misrepresentations to the U.S. Supreme Court in decades-old Indian law cases.”
• In The Incidental Economist, Nicholas Bagley considers whether, if the Court rules for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell and states establish their own exchanges, residents of those states will in fact qualify for subsidies for health care that they purchase on the new exchanges.
• At Opinio Juris, William Dodge discusses Cardona v. Chiquita Brands International, a case scheduled for Friday’s Conference in which the Court has been asked to consider the application of the Alien Tort Statute to conduct involving U.S. corporations and conduct in the United States.

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