Wednesday round-up

This morning the court hears oral argument in two criminal-procedure cases. The first is Rosales-Mireles v. United States, which asks when erroneous applications of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines should be corrected on plain-error review. Evan Lee previewed the case for this blog. Robin Grieff and Hillary Rich provide a preview at Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. Counting to 5 (podcast) also previews the case, while Subscript provides a graphic explainer.

Today’s second case is Dahda v. United States, in which the justices will consider how broadly to read a statute requiring the suppression of evidence obtained under a wiretap order that exceeds a judge’s territorial jurisdiction. Richard Re had this blog’s preview. Axel Schamis and Katherine Van Bramer preview the case for Cornell; Counting to 5 (podcast) also offers a preview. Subscript’s graphic explainer is here.

Yesterday the justices issued orders from last Friday’s conference; they did not grant any new cases or take action on the federal government’s request that they review a challenge to a lower-court order preventing the Trump administration from unwinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Amy Howe covers the orders list for this blog; her coverage first appeared at Howe on the Court. At his eponymous blog, Ross Runkel notes that the court summarily reversed in CNH Industrial v. Reese, stating that the lower court had deviated from “ordinary principles of contract interpretation” in concluding that the retiree-benefits provision in an expired collective-bargaining agreement had vested for life. At HeplerBroom’s blog, Benjamin Wilson looks at the cert denial in CareFirst v. Attias, which involves a standing issue that “would have had major implications for data-breach litigation and in class actions generally.”

At Reuters, Andrew Chung reports that the justices also “turned away a challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period for firearms purchases that is intended to guard against impulsive violence and suicides,” along with another cert petition filed by gun-rights advocates, “underscor[ing the court’s] continued reluctance to step into a national debate over gun control roiled by a series of mass shootings including one at a Florida school last week.” For The Washington Post, Robert Barnes reports that Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a solo dissent to the ruling, accusing his colleagues of “turning the Second Amendment into a ‘disfavored right.’” Additional coverage of the cert denial in Silvester v. Becerra and the Thomas dissent comes from Nina Totenberg at NPR, Greg Stohr at Bloomberg, Richard Wolf for USA Today, Adam Liptak for The New York Times, Ariane de Vogue at CNN, David Savage for the Los Angeles Times, Ronn Blitzer at Law & Crime, David Sherfinski for The Washington Times, Lydia Wheeler at The Hill, and Pete Williams at NBC News. Commentary comes from Steven Mazie at The Economist’s Democracy in America blog.

Yesterday the justices heard oral arguments in two criminal cases. The first was Currier v. Virginia, which asks what happens to a defendant’s double jeopardy protections when he consents to sequential trials for multiple, overlapping offenses. Scott Bomboy discusses the case at Constitution Daily. Yesterday’s second case was City of Hays v. Vogt, which asks whether a probable-cause hearing is part of a criminal case within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment’s self-incrimination clause. At The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro notes that “all three lawyers who r[o]se to speak [during the oral argument in Vogt] were former law clerks” of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in what “could be the first time that three former clerks of a single justice [have] argu[ed] before their justice.” Mark Walsh provides a first-hand account of yesterday’s courtroom session for this blog.

At the Associated Press, Michael Kunzelman reports that “[a] 71-year-old Louisiana inmate whose case led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on juvenile-offender sentences was denied parole Monday, more than a half-century after he killed a sheriff’s deputy at age 17.” Additional coverage comes from Grace Toohey at The Advocate.

Briefly:

• For The Washington Post, Robert Barnes reports that one of the inmates featured in the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” Brendan Dassey, “asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to throw out the confession he made more than a decade ago, saying it was improperly coerced.”
• At the Associated Press, Mark Sherman reports that Justice Neil Gorsuch “holds the deciding vote in a case to be argued Feb. 26 that could affect the financial viability of unions that are major supporters of Democratic candidates and causes.”
• At Reason’s Hit and Run blog, Damon Root looks at “three Supreme Court cases to watch” during the February argument session.
• At another Reason blog, the Volokh Conspiracy, Samuel Bray urges the justices to grant a cert petition that “raises a fundamental question about how the First Amendment interacts with church property cases.”

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