Thursday round-up

By Amanda Rice
on May 26, 2011 at 7:50 am

Coverage of Monday’s decision in Brown v. Plata, the California prison overcrowding case, continues. Columnist George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times considers Governor Brown’s options in light of the Court’s ruling: “Criminals either will be released to local authorities or they’ll be set free on the streets. Either the tax revenue is generated for jail time, or taxpayers will distribute get-out-of-jail-free cards.” At Fox News, Judson Berger points out two additional options, both of which “would involve more state funding”: Brown could “send prisoners out of state or simply build more prisons.”  But taking a longer-term perspective, an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times emphasizes that the decision might spark “a productive conversation about how best to reform our prison system.” At Dorf on Law, Mike Dorf “unpack[s] a somewhat technical piece of Justice Scalia’s dissent,” in which he “could be saying . . . that the plaintiffs in a properly defined class action would lack standing” because “no one can know in advance that his treatment or non-treatment will amount to cruel and unusual punishment.”

Briefly:

• At Cato @ Liberty, Ilya Shapiro discusses Maples v. Thomas, a procedural-default habeas case that the Court will consider next Term, including an amicus brief filed by Cato and the Constitution Project on the petitioner’s behalf.