Wednesday round-up

By Amy Howe
on May 21, 2014 at 7:13 am

It has been more than two weeks since the Court’s decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway, upholding a New York town’s practice of beginning its town council meetings with a prayer, but commentary on the decision continues.  Writing for The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Steven Mazie contends that the Court’s “ruling denied the validity of [the plaintiffs’] alienation from the public affairs of their hometown and disparaged their allegations as the mere whining of oversensitive dissidents.”  At PrawfsBlawg, Richard Re and Howard Wasserman take on the issue of the Court’s decision and standing.  Re observes that the Court’s “holding raises an interesting threshold question: in the absence of coercion, did the plaintiffs have standing to bring their claim in the first place?”  Following up on an earlier post on standing, Wasserman explains why, although he had originally thought that his views were different from Re’s, “upon further reflection, I am less sure we are not saying the same thing.” 

Briefly:

• At Re’s Judicata, Richard Re weighs in on “the underrated use of exclamation marks in Supreme Court opinions.”
• At ISCOTUSnow, Christopher Schmidt discusses Brown v. Board of Education, which was decided sixty years ago last Saturday, and explains why the decision “has always been both inspiration and disappointment. Indeed, they are two sides of the same coin.”