Monday round-up
on Nov 21, 2016 at 6:53 am
Last Thursday, the court issued a rare order dismissing two of the cases on its December docket, Visa, Inc. v. Stoumbos and Visa, Inc. v. Osborn, which had been consolidated for argument on December 7, and which involve class action antitrust suits against Visa and MasterCard over fees charged for using ATM machines. Ronald Mann covered the order for this blog. Additional coverage comes from Tony Mauro in The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), who reports that court dismissed the case because “recent briefing by lawyers for major credit card companies ‘chose to rely on a different argument’ than the one that persuaded the justices to take up the case in the first place,” and that the “effect of the Supreme Court’s action is to allow the class actions to go forward.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondents in these cases.]
Constitution Daily’s We the People podcast “looks ahead to the future of the Supreme Court during the presidency of Donald Trump.” In an op-ed in Forbes, George Leef argues that Trump should fill the vacancy on the court with a jurist who not only champions originalism but also is open to overturning precedent, maintaining that judges “who blindly adhere to stare decisis help to cement in place the vast federal administrative and regulatory state that often sacrifices individual rights on the altar of collectivist and authoritarian policies.”
In USA Today, Richard Wolf reports on the recent Federalist Society convention in Washington honoring the late Justice Antonin Scalia, noting that nearly “all the judges on President-elect Donald Trump’s short list for the Supreme Court” were in attendance. In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports on remarks by Justice Clarence Thomas at the convention in which Thomas urged the society’s members to continue Scalia’s work “in promoting originalism and limited government”; the “speech was not without controversy,” Mauro notes, garnering an objection by the Alliance for Justice to Thomas’ ‘appearance at what it claimed was a fundraiser for the society.” Coverage of Justice Samuel Alito’s opening remarks at the convention comes from Robert Barnes in The Washington Post, who reports that Alito “listed the issues that concern him, including gun rights and alleged overreach by government agencies, and said they should be answered with this thought in mind: ‘What would Scalia do?’”
