Tuesday round-up
Yesterday’s coverage of the Court focused on Shelby County v. Holder, the challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which is scheduled for oral argument on February 27. This blog continues its symposium on the case: Hashim Mooppan argues that “Congress flouted the Court’s guidance when it reauthorized and amended Section 5 in 2006” and therefore “the Court has no choice but to exercise its constitutional duty to invalidate the current version of [the provision],” while Michael Pitts notes that there is at least some reason to believe that the Court will stop short of invalidating the provision due to “the discomfort some Justices must have about burying a seminal civil rights law and what sort of big-picture message that would send to the public.” Writing for the Constitutional Accountability Center, Doug Kendall observes that the briefs filed in the case reveal a dearth of leading conservative constitutional thinkers supporting the county’s position; he concludes that this may reflect the prevailing view among such scholars that challenges to this type of legislation are better aimed at Congress rather than the courts. At Slate, Emily Bazelon argues that the Court should hesitate before striking down “a protection for minority voters Congress reaffirmed only six years ago.”
Briefly:
- Harvard Law School (video) reports on Justice Thomas’s visit to the law school, in which he discussed his path to the Court and his favorite aspects of the job. (Hat tip: How Appealing.)
- At this blog, Lyle Denniston provides a day-by-day overview of the April oral argument calendar, while “SCOTUSblog on camera” features its first installment of a five-part interview series with Pulitzer Prize winning Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse.
- At Constitution Daily, Lyle Denniston explores how the Court might approach proposed gun-control laws limiting the number of bullets that a gun can fire in light of its recent Second Amendment precedents and observes that questions about the scope of an individual’s right to own a gun for self protection and the scope of the government’s authority to regulate guns are still “wide open to be explored first by lower courts.”
- Bert Eljera of the Examiner reports that aging Filipino veterans seeking benefits for their services to the United States during World War plan to file a cert. petition asking the Court to overrule a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denying their claims.
- At Wired, David Kravets reports that the government filed a brief urging the Court to reject a cert. petition challenging as excessive a $222,000 jury verdict under the Copyright Act for illegally sharing music files.
- James Rosen reports at McClatchy on the amicus brief filed by ten
Republican senators in United States v. Windsor urging the Court to uphold the federal Defense of Marriage Act. - The Associated Press reports that a Democratic congressman is introducing a constitutional amendment designed to overturn the Court’s decision in Citizens United, in which the Court held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting political expenditures by corporations.
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