Thursday round-up

By Amanda Rice
on Dec 9, 2010 at 10:16 am

Yesterday the Court heard oral argument in two cases, Chase Bank USA, N.A. v. McCoy and Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting. Transcripts of both arguments are available here.

Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, the (other) Arizona immigration case, generated significant media coverage and commentary. At issue in Whiting is whether an Arizona law requiring employer participation in a federal employment verification database and imposing sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized aliens is preempted by federal law. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post suggests that the Justices “sounded conflicted,” but most journalists and commentators predict that the Court will uphold the Arizona statute. Adam Liptak of the New York Times does the “judicial arithmetic”: with Justice Kagan recused, a tie vote would leave the lower court’s decision upholding the law in place. However, David Savage at the Los Angeles Times points to “indications that the result could be different next year when an even more controversial Arizona immigration law requiring police to check the immigration status of persons who are detained could reach the [C]ourt.” SCOTUSblog, Slate, CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, Courthouse News Service, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, the WSJ Law Blog, NPR, Fox News, the Miami Herald, NBC News’ First Read blog, the Washington Times, Constitutional Law Prof Blog, and JURIST all have coverage of the argument. USA Today features a debate on the case: the editorial board argues that the Court should uphold the law, while Robin S. Conrad argues in favor of preemption. SCOTUSblog has podcasts from attorneys on both sides of the case.

Courthouse News Service has coverage of the argument in Chase Bank USA, N.A. v. McCoy, in which the Court is considering a credit card company’s disclosure obligations when it raises a customer’s rate pursuant to the credit card agreement.

On Tuesday, the ACLU filed a petition for certiorari in in Mohamed v. Jeppesen DataPlan, the Ninth Circuit case challenging a Boeing subsidiary’s role in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The ACLU seeks to challenge the en banc court’s application of the state secrets privilege. JURIST, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Wired have coverage.

Briefly:

• At TIME, Adam Cohen discusses Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the gender-discrimination class action in which the court granted cert. on Monday, arguing that the Court’s resolution of “procedural question” presented by the case “will have a big impact on the women’s substantive rights.” Al Norman of the Huffington Post also previews the case.
• At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston highlights a cert. petition by lawyers for five Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Court reviewed the case last Term in Kiyemba v. Obama and remanded to the D.C. Circuit, which again barred a court order that would mandate the prisoners’ release. The petition alleges that the D.C. Circuit’s latest decision amounted to an “abdication” of a “quintessentially judicially