Monday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Jun 6, 2016 at 6:22 am

Commentary on the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia comes from Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz, who in The Washington Post suggest that, “[l]ong after the current vacancy is filled, eight-justice courts may occur with depressing regularity.”   And in the ABA Journal, Erwin Chemerinsky cites the Court’s decisions in Zubik v. Burwell, the challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate, and Spokeo v. Robins as examples of cases in which the “lack of a majority is problematic when it leaves a split in the circuits and when it creates confusion in the law.”

Briefly:

• At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman looks at comments made by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and conclude that they “clearly convey that the expressed positions of potential nominees for Supreme Court Justice are main criteria for their picks.”
• In The Washington Times, Tom Howell Jr. reports that the General Accounting Office has concluded that, although the Justices themselves remain “leery,” “[a]llowing cameras to capture Supreme Court oral arguments would give Americans an unfiltered look at how the judiciary branch works.”
• At The George Washington Law Review’s On the Docket, Robert Glicksman analyzes last week’s ruling in United States Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co. Inc., in which the Court ruled that an approved “jurisdictional determination” by the Army Corps of Engineers is a final agency action subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Remember, we rely exclusively on our readers to send us links for our round-up.  If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, or op-ed relating to the Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com.

[Disclosure:  Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in Zubik.  However, I am not affiliated with the firm.]