Wednesday round-up

By Amanda Rice
on Mar 9, 2011 at 9:37 am

With the Court in recess this week, reporters and commentators continue to focus on the Court’s recent decisions.

Writing for SCOTUSblog, Kathryn McCann discusses the Court’s opinion in Milner v. Department of the Navy, in which the Court held that FOIA Exemption 2 shields only those records relating to employee relations and human resources issues. At the First Amendment Center, Tony Mauro also analyzes the decision in Milner, which he describes as “upend[ing] 30 years of federal government practice invoking the exemption at issue to withhold a broad swath of material.” At TIME, Michael Lindenberger discusses the implications of Monday’s decision in Skinner v. Switzer, the Section 1983 DNA evidence case. At Dorf on Law, Mike Dorf analyzes last week’s unanimous opinion in FCC v. AT&T. He explains why, although the opinion is “generally satisfactory (and admirably succinct),” “it is nonetheless a bit too textualist for [his] tastes.”  Finally, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick discusses the Court’s decision in Snyder v. Phelps, which held that the First Amendment shields from tort liability those who stage a peaceful protest on a matter of public concern near a military funeral. She focuses on both sides’ “unspoken assumptions about whether funerals are private places” and the unanswered “question of whether the media plays any kind of role in converting private spaces into public ones.”

At his blog for The Atlantic, James Warren reports that Justice Sotomayor spoke at Northwestern University School of Law on Monday. In response to student questioning, she discussed the intrusive questions she was asked during the confirmation process — in particular, about dating — and suggested that “society has a double standard” with regard to the dating habits of male and female candidates.” The ABA Journal and the Washington Post also have coverage of Justice Sotomayor’s remarks.

Briefly:

• Ben Zion Hershberg of the Louisville Courier-Journal reports on the consequences of the Monday’s denial of cert. in an Indiana adoption case. Scott Jaschik of USA Today reports on the denial of cert. in an Establishment Clause challenge brought by the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
• At Lawfare, Larkin Reynolds notes that the Department of Justice has filed oppositions to four Guantanamo cert. petitions in the last week and highlights the governments’ framing of the questions presented in each case.
• At ACS Blog, Rochelle Bobroff previews Maxwell-Jolly v. Independent Living Center of Southern California and consolidated cases, which are scheduled for oral argument next term and which “address the preemption of a California law by the federal Medicaid statute.” She argues that the resolution of the case “could have wide-ranging implications for laws involving the environment, employment, immigration, civil rights, food and drug safety, elections and much more.”
• Gerard Magliocca of Concurring Opinions highlights the accomplishments of Justice Arthur Goldberg, who resigned from the Court after just three years to become Ambassador to the United Nations.
• At Bench Memos, Ed Whelan responds to Robert Reich’s criticisms of Justices Scalia and Thomas (originally published to his Christian Science Monitor blog and mentioned in Monday’s round-up) in two posts (here and here).