Thursday round-up

By Cormac Early
on Jan 31, 2013 at 9:24 am

Yesterday’s coverage focused on some of the amicus briefs filed recently in the same-sex marriage cases.  Mollie Reilly of The Huffington Post reports on the brief filed by the Westboro Baptist Church “in support of neither party” but “suggesting reversal” in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, while Scottie Thomaston of Equality on Trial covers the National Organization for Marriage’s brief in United States v. Windsor, the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. 

Coverage of Justice Sotomayor’s memoir, My Beloved World, also continues. Nina Totenberg of NPR reports on the book’s strong sales, while Caryn Rousseau of the Associated Press (via NBC Chicago) reports on Justice Sotomayor’s talk yesterday at the Chicago Public Library as part of her book tour.

Briefly:

• At Forbes, Rich Samp discusses the amicus brief that the federal government filed recently in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett, arguing that the brief’s “only apparent purpose was to help lawyers filing tort suits to draft complaints that could withstand preemption claims.”
• At Reuters, Alison Frankel reports on the Justice Department’s brief opposing cert. in Danielczyk v. United States, a challenge to the ban on direct corporate campaign spending in the Federal Campaign Finance Act.
• Paul Bland of Public Justice, writing at the Consumer Law and Policy Blog, describes American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, in which the Court will consider whether the Federal Arbitration Act permits courts to invalidate arbitration agreements if they do not permit class arbitration of federal-law claims, as “the most important consumer case involving a challenge to an arbitration clause since AT&T v. Concepcion.”