Thursday round-up

By Amanda Rice
on Mar 31, 2011 at 8:32 am

Yesterday the Court heard oral argument in PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing and Talk America, Inc. v. Michigan Bell Telephone Company. Transcripts of both arguments are available here.

In PLIVA, the Court is considering whether generic drug manufacturers can be sued under state law for failing to provide safety information that is not required by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Most reports indicated that the Court seemed divided on the issue at oral argument. Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr notes that “[t]he case may turn on which of of two precedents the court concludes should apply — the 2009 ruling in a case involving Wyeth or a 2001 decision that barred suits claiming FDA product approval was obtained by fraud.” The New York Times, CNN, and the Associated Press have additional coverage of the argument.

At the Huffington Post, Jessica Levinson discusses McComish v. Bennett, the campaign finance case in which the Court heard oral argument on Monday.  Although she maintains that “there really is no restriction on speech” at issue in the case, Levinson predicts that the “Justices [will] split along the same 5-4 lines that they did in . . . Citizens United.” The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times agrees that the Court “seems poised to overturn” the Arizona law, but it suggests that “[t]he Court can, and should, uphold the law without revisiting larger issues about the role of money in politics.”  Tuesday’s argument in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the gender discrimination class action, also continues to generate commentary. Writing for CNN, Linda Mullenix discusses what the case “means for women,” while at the Huffington Post Kent Greenfield contends that the plaintiffs may lose “because Justice Kennedy does not understand the power of corporate culture.”  Writing for her Court Beat blog, Joan Biskupic notes that both arguments “reminded [her] of how profoundly the Court is split 5-4, conservatives-liberals, on cases that really matter.”

Briefly:

• At The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen discusses Tuesday’s decision in Connick v. Thompson, the failure-to-train Brady case. He argues that the majority’s decision “reveals outright hostility to the rights of the wrongfully convicted to adequately redress their conceded grievances.