Friday round-up
Yesterday’s coverage continued to focus on Judge Robert Bork, who passed away on Wednesday. In addition to the coverage collected in yesterday’s round-up, other coverage comes from Akhil Amar at Slate, Dylan Matthews at The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, David Greenberg in an op-ed for The New York Times, Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy, and Christopher Schmidt at the Legal History Blog.
Other news examined the D.C. Circuit’s denial of rehearing en banc yesterday in the greenhouse gas cases. The six-to-two ruling leaves in place the three-judge panel’s opinion upholding the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations; industry groups and states that oppose the new rules are likely to seek Supreme Court review of the decision. Bloomberg and Lawrence Hurley of E&E Publishing both have coverage of the ruling, considering it in the context of the Court’s 2007 opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA, in which it held that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Briefly:
- At this blog, Stephen Wermiel has a “SCOTUS for law students” post focusing on test cases, exploring some of the most famous ones throughout the Court’s history.
- At Balkinization, Jason Mazzone discusses the Court’s Second Amendment opinions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, arguing that despite one popular view, the opinions “might well be democracy-enhancing rather than democracy-constraining.”
- At Appellate Daily, Michelle Olsen reports on Justice Breyer’s 1980 appointment to the First Circuit, suggesting that his swift confirmation was due at least in part to the fact that Justice Breyer had “impressed senators from both parties” in his role as the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- At the Blog of Legal Times, Mike Scarcella reports on a cert. petition filed last month by a District of Columbia man, seeking review of the D.C. Circuit’s en banc ruling that federal prosecutors did not have to prove a given defendant had knowledge that a weapon was capable of firing automatically before bringing a weapons charge under federal law.
- Edward Reines argues at the Huffington Post that the Court’s opinion last Term in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., in which it invalidated the claims of Prometheus’s diagnostic method patents as drawn to unpatentable subject matter, “will only hurt the personalized medicine revolution in its delicate infancy.”
- Next week, C-SPAN Radio will feature a series highlighting Supreme Court oral arguments made by current Justices before they joined the Court. Beginning on Monday and running through Friday, the programs will focus on – in the following order – the Chief Justice, Justice Ginsburg, Justice Alito, Justice Kagan, and Justice Scalia. All programs will air at 7 p.m. Eastern.
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