Thursday round-up

By Amanda Rice
on Apr 7, 2011 at 8:30 am

Jeff Skilling, former Enron CEO and Petitioner in the 2010 case Skilling v. United States, in which the Court held that the “honest services” fraud statute covers only bribery and kickback schemes, lost the appeal of his conviction in the Fifth Circuit. Ashby Jones of the WSJ Law Blog explains the court’s decision: “[E]ven though the application of the honest-services fraud statute may have been wrong, the error was, in legal parlance, ‘harmless.’ Thus, Skilling’s conviction stands.’” Reuters, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, Sentencing Law and Policy blog, and Bloomberg also have coverage.

Briefly:

• The editorial board of the New York Times discusses Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the gender-discrimination class action, and suggests that “[i]f the Court rejects this suit, it will send a chilling message that some companies are too big to be held accountable.”
• The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times argues that the Court’s recent decision in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, in which the Court held that challengers to an Arizona tax credit lacked standing to bring their Establishment Clause challenge, “will make it harder in the future for taxpayers to challenge programs that breach the wall between church and state.”
• At her New York Times Opinionator blog, Linda Greenhouse suggests, in light of the Court’s denial of three Guantanamo cert. petitions on Monday, that the Court might be “finally finished with Guantanamo.”
• At Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Ruthann Robson’s “Footnote of the Day” highlights a “deep disagreement” between the majority and the dissent in Citizens United as to the meaning of footnote 26 of First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 case (Part I is here; Part II is here).