Friday round-up
on Mar 15, 2013 at 7:41 am
On Thursday, Justices Breyer and Kennedy testified before the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on a range of subjects, including the negative impact the sequester may have on access to justice and the problems with introducing cameras into Supreme Court oral arguments. Coverage comes from Greg Stohr of Bloomberg, Jess Bravin (here and here, subscription required) of The Wall Street Journal Law Blog, Bill Mears at CNN, Lawrence Hurley at Reuters, Stephanie Condon at CBS News, Tony Mauro at the Blog of Legal Times, Sam Baker at The Hill, and Tal Kopan at Politico.
Other coverage and commentary focused on the upcoming oral arguments in the same-sex marriage cases, Hollingsworth v. Perry (the challenge to California’s Proposition 8) and United States v. Windsor (the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act). In the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Jess Bravin looks at what these cases might mean for the Chief Justice’s broader legacy on the Court. Peter Henderson and Dan Levine, at Thomson Reuter’s News & Insight blog, analyze the options before the Court in the context of those before the California Supreme Court five years ago, before it ruled that the state constitution permitted same-sex couples the right to marry. And at Constitution Daily, Lyle examines the procedural posture at issue in Windsor, and in particular whether the executive branch has a duty to defend every law in the courts, even when it believes that the law is unconstitutional. [Disclosure: Tejinder Singh of the law firm Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by international human rights advocates in support of the respondents in Hollingsworth v. Perry. And Kevin Russell of the law firm Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel on an amicus brief filed by former senators in support of Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor.]
Briefly:
- At the Brennan Center for Justice blog, Sidney Rosdeitcher and Katriana Roh previews Monday’s oral argument in Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., in which the Court will consider whether the National Voter Registration Act preempts an Arizona law requiring applicants for voter registration in federal elections to prove their citizenship beyond the requirements already enumerated in the Act. At Slate, Skye Nickalls has additional coverage of the case.
- For this blog, Ronald Mann previews Tuesday’s oral arguments in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett, in which the Court will consider whether federal law preempts state law design-defect claims brought against generic pharmaceutical products, here, and in Sebelius v. Cloer, in which the Court will consider whether a claimant who files an untimely petition under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program may recover an award of attorney’s fees, here.
- At the Campaign Legal Center blog, Armand Derfner considers the appropriate standard of review to be applied in Shelby County v. Holder, the challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
- For Patent Docs, Kevin Noonan summarizes the amicus brief filed by the American Intellectual Property Law Association in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, in which the Court is considering whether human genes are patent-eligible subject matter.
- At Reason, Damon Root discusses Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence in the context of the broader civil rights tradition.
