Monday round-up

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr offers some alternative theories to explain the broad scope of the cert. grant in McDonald v. City of Chicago.  He suggests that the Court may not be planning to overturn the Slaughterhouse Cases and embrace incorporation through the Privileges and Immunities Clause after all.

Robert Barnes at the Washington Post and John Schwartz of the New York Times discuss Skilling v. United States, a constitutional vagueness challenge by former ENRON President Jeffrey Skilling to a federal anti-fraud provision that criminalizes the denial of “honest services.”  The Court will consider two other “honest services” cases this week: Weyhrauch v. United States and Black v. United States, this Tuesday.  Lyle Denniston previewed Black here.

Warrant Richey of the Christian Science Monitor and David H. Gans of Text & History both analyze Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, an Article II challenge to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act being heard today at the Court.  The Wall Street Journal weighs in, arguing that Sarbanes-Oxley’s bookkeeping requirements cause more harm than good.

At the Christian Science Monitor, Warren Richey discusses Florida v. Powell, in which the Court will consider whether police must inform a witness of their right to counsel during an interrogation, or whether it is instead sufficient to inform them beforehand.

At Balkinization, Sandy Levinson argues that Linda Greenhouse’s suggestion that the Court has effectively imposed a lower standard for ineffective assistance of counsel in death penalty appeals for veterans could be seen as a form of affirmative action.

At the Boston Globe, Claude R. Marx reviews Joan Biskupic’s biography of Antonin Scalia.