Thursday round-up

By Amanda Rice
on Dec 23, 2010 at 9:45 am

It’s our last round-up before we take a break for the holidays, and coverage of the Court is light.

Today’s news, in brief:

• South Carolina has settled an original water rights case against North Carolina that had been pending at the Court for three years. (Disclosure:  Akin Gump represents a party to the case, the Catawba River Water Supply Project.)  The State, The Associated Press (via Bloomberg), and the Charleston Regional Business Journal all have coverage.
• At The BLT, Tony Mauro reports that the ABA has “established a task force aimed at . . . helping criminal defense lawyers understand and meet new responsibilities to clients stemming from the Supreme Court’s March decision in Padilla v. Kentucky.” Mauro reports that Padilla, in which the Court held that defense lawyers are constitutionally obligated to inform their clients that they risk deportation if they plead guilty, “is being used in cases where guilty pleas have had consequences in other areas including employment, child custody and housing.”
• Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that a cheerleader who was kicked off her cheerleading squad “for refusing to chant the name of an athlete she said had raped her” will seek Supreme Court review of a decision by the Fifth Circuit, which affirmed the lower court’s dismissal of the suit.
• At FindLaw, Sherry Colb discusses Schwarzenegger v. Plata, the California prison overcrowding case, and argues against “prison as the default” response to crime.
• ACSblog has additional coverage of Senator Arlen Specter’s criticism of the Court during his final floor speech (which Adam covered in yesterday’s round-up).