Monday round-up

JAMES BICKFORD MAR 21, 2011 9:19 AM

In this weekend’s coverage of the Court:

• Kent Scheidegger of Crime and Consequences previews Davis v. United States and Tolentino v. New York, both of which are being argued this morning.  He notes that “[b]oth arise out of traffic stops for excessive noise” and that the advocates will include Caitlin Halligan, who has been nominated to the D.C. Circuit.

• At Reason magazine, Damon Root challenges the idea that the Court displays a “pro-corporate bias,” arguing instead that “the Supreme Court reaches its decisions through a complicated and frequently shifting mix of the justices’ judicial philosophies, political ideologies, and personal quirks.”  At the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler concurs, criticizing studies that attach “simplistic labels like ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ business” to individual decisions, rather than “evaluating how various decisions approach statutory interpretation, the federal-state balance, or the desirability of judicial intervention.”

• In the New York Times, Emily Bazelon has a profile of Justice Samuel Alito, “the one conservative on the Supreme Court without a flashy legal signature.”  Bazelon contends that Justice Alito provides “a window onto right-wing empathy on the court — and onto conservative instincts generally about who deserves our solicitude.”

• In the Chicago Tribune, David Savage explains what could be at stake in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, which is scheduled for oral argument next week.  He observes that a victory for Dukes “could open the door for the broader use of statistics to prove job discrimination — and not just on behalf of women, but also for minorities or people with disabilities,” while “a win for Wal-Mart could deal a death blow to nationwide job-bias suits by ruling that employees who work in different stores and hold different jobs do not have enough in common to be a class.”

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