Monday Round-up

As the Justices will hold their first private conference this Tuesday, the Supreme Court press corps turns its focus to the upcoming docket. Tony Mauro writes in the National Law Journal on the dominance of business cases in OT09 : more than half of the 45 docketed cases address business issues. His article focuses specifically on how former intellectual property lawyer and current Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor may vote in cases ranging from patents (Bilski), antitrust (American Needle), or mutual funds (Jones). BusinessWeek also has a preview of OT09 business cases.

Also in the NLJ, Marcia Coyle looks at the unusually high number of  cases before the Court (six) on “lawyering.” This uptick in the number of cases about law practice may indicate an increased scrutiny of the legal profession. Coyle provides a very useful summation of the half-dozen cases that would seem rather dry to those outside the bar. But, according to Dahlia Lithwick, there’s still hope that non-lawyers will feel invested in the Court’s decisions: she has a column in the October 5 issue of Newsweek addressing the continued public confusion about the Court, as indicated in C-SPAN’s and Gallup’s recent polls. She says that “the term that opens next week promises to provide another fistful of cases that will slowly deepen our understanding of the Roberts Court” and believes that the Court is responsive to public opinion.

David Savage of the LA Times reports on the two juvenile life-without-parole cases, Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida. Taking a California angle to the cases’ significance, Savage notes that two years ago, California joined several other states in prohibiting juvenile LWOP.

McClatchy DC details the Court’s coming deliberations on whether releasing photographs of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi prisoners might pose a national security threat. The article also discusses the Obama administration’s intervention in the Court’s review of Kiyemba v. Obama (08-1234), on the Uighur detainees. Lyle Denniston’s most recent post on Kiyemba is here and a post on U.S. Defense Department et al. v. American Civil Liberties Union et al. (09-160) is  here.

At Crime & Consequences, Kent Scheidegger reports on the Court’s stay in Mosley v. Thaler, No. 08-9991, and its relationship to the upcoming OT09 case, Wood v. Allen.

In some lingering reflections on Citizens United, Ken Jost contrasts Justice Sotomayor’s apparent judicial restraint–indicated during her confirmation hearings and during the Citizens reargument–with Chief Justice John Roberts’ lack thereof.

Slate’s Emily Bazelon reviews “The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution” in the New York Times Book Review. Bazelon calls NYU Law Professor Barry Friedman’s book a “thought-­provoking and authoritative history” on the relationship between the Court and popular opinion.

Video of Justice Sotomayor’s ceremonial first pitch at Saturday’s victorious Yankees game is available from MLB.com.