Monday round-up

By Amanda Rice
on Aug 30, 2010 at 9:34 am

On Friday Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke at the 2010 Tenth Circuit Bench and Bar Conference in Colorado Springs. After delivering a speech written by her late husband, Justice Ginsburg joined Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada, in a question-and-answer session moderated by NPR’s Nina Totenberg. Justice Ginsburg declined to weigh in on the question of televising oral arguments at the Court, but she did speculate that televising confirmation hearings has extended the confirmation process. The Colorado Springs Gazette, The Hill, and the Associated Press have coverage. Video of Justice Ginsburg’s remarks and the question-and-answer session is available at C-SPAN’s Video Library. Justice Sonia Sotomayor also spoke at the conference in a closed-door session with the judges on Saturday.

Briefly:

• At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick considers whether and how the presence of three women on the Court might “change the court in any real way.”
• At the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler reports on a petition for a writ of mandamus recently filed by the plaintiffs in Comer v. Murphy Oil, a public nuisance suit against several energy companies in the Fifth Circuit.
• Adler also discusses the Solicitor General’s brief in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, which Anna discussed in more detail in Friday’s round-up.  He concludes that the SG’s legal arguments are “rather modest and quite sensible.”