Thursday round-up

By Kiran Bhat
on Jul 7, 2011 at 8:09 am

Humberto Leal Garcia, a Mexican national convicted of rape and murder in 1994, is scheduled to be executed tonight in Texas. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments have filed amicus briefs urging the Court to stay the execution. The editorial board of the New York Times also urges the Court to grant Leal’s request for a stay, arguing that it would be a “miscarriage of justice” if he were executed before Congress can pass legislation to ensure that states comply with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which requires law enforcement officials to inform foreign nationals of their right to have consular officials notified of their arrest. Politico, Fox News, and the Associated Press (via the Chicago Tribune) all have coverage.

As Conor noted yesterday, reactions to the Court’s recent decision in Brown v. EMA continue to pour in. The editorial board of the Grand Rapids Press argues that although the Court’s decision is not “ideal” insofar as it “leaves the important task of controlling access” to violent video games “in the hands of the gaming industry, retailers, parents and other caring adults,” “[w]orse would be to leave that task to a distant government, with little assurance of where the censorship would end.”

Reviews of the just-ended October Term 2010 are still trickling in. At the Huffington Post, David Coleman argues that this Term’s decisions, especially Wal-Mart v. Dukes, “closed the courts’ doors to the potential 300 million citizens who might sometime need ‘their day in court.’”  Marcia Coyle reviews the Term for the National Law Journal (via Texas Lawyer), highlighting some headline-grabbers like Dukes and Brown, as well as several less-publicized employer retaliation, pre-emption, and patent cases. And C-SPAN features a Heritage Foundation panel discussion (video) on the Term, led by former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal.

The debate over whether Justice Ginsburg should retire before the 2012 presidential election continues to make news. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal discusses the debate and explains why, “as crassly political as the people making [the suggestions that the Justice should retire] are in the view of the law, they don’t seem to have given much thought to the politics of confirming a Ginsburg successor.”  And in a post for Bloomberg View, Stephen Carter argues that Justice Ginsburg’s “ultimate fealty is to the Constitution and the institution [she] serves, rather than to particular issues or movements.”

Briefly:

• On the thirtieth anniversary of Justice O’Connor’s nomination to the Court, Meg Waite Clayton at the Huffington Post reviews O’Connor’s career and her effect on the Court.
• Ronald K. L. Collins of The First Amendment Center recognizes the advocates whose arguments shaped this Term’s First Amendment decisions.
• Tony Mauro of the National Law Journal’s Supreme Court Insider (subscription required) has an interview with Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.