Thursday round-up
on Jul 12, 2012 at 10:26 am
Coverage of the Court continues to focus on the Chief Justice and his vote to uphold the individual mandate. At the Federalist Society’s recently relaunched SCOTUSreport blog, Nicholas Rosenkranz argues that the Chief Justice’s application of the canon of constitutional avoidance in the health care decision was “exceedingly odd,” while at his Election Law Blog Rick Hasen contends that the Chief Justice “engaged in two worse applications of the canon in recent years.” Responding to speculation that the Chief Justice changed his vote in response to political pressure, Sherry F. Colb argues in her Verdict column that in fact he “show[ed] integrity in successfully subordinating his loyalty to his four dissenting justices to” his loyalty to the Court as an institution. In a follow-up post at Dorf on Law, Colb also criticizes the four dissenting Justices. And Linda Greenhouse has a post in the Opinionator blog of The New York Times on the “mystery of John Roberts.”
Solicitor General Don Verrilli made his first public remarks since the health care decision yesterday, at a Term wrap-up hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Brent Kendall of The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has coverage, as do C-Span (video), Josh Gerstein of Politico, Sam Baker of The Hill’s Healthwatch blog, Patrick Svitek in the Huffington Post, and Matthew Volkov in Main Justice.
Briefly:
- Bloomberg Law has posted an interview with Nina Totenberg of NPR, in which she discusses the recent leaks from the Court.
- In the aftermath of United States v. Alvarez, the case holding the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional, Congress is considering a revised bill to criminalize false statements about military service made “with the intent to obtain anything of value.” Coverage comes from Ruthann Robson of Constitutional Law Prof Blog and Gabe Rottman of the ACLU.
- Adam Liptak of the New York Times appeared on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” to discuss the future of the Roberts Court.
- Kent Scheidegger of the Crime and Consequences blog has posted a review of the last term’s criminal law rulings, concluding that “it could have been worse.”
- The editorial board of the New York Times calls on the Court to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
- At SCOTUSreport, John O. McGinnis has a new post in a four-part series on Citizens United v. FEC; he argues that the case represents a “return to core First Amendment doctrine in the very area where the risk of government suppression and manipulation is most likely.”
- Over at Alison Frankel’s On The Case blog at Thomson Reuters, Erin Geiger Smith previews Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in which the Court will consider whether the first sale doctrine in copyright law applies to works manufactured abroad.
