Thursday round-up

AMY HOWE OCT 15, 2015 8:02 AM

The Court finished up its October sitting yesterday, beginning with oral arguments in the class-action case Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez.  Coverage of the oral argument comes from Tony Mauro for the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), with commentary from Daniel Fisher of Forbes.  The Court also heard oral arguments in a consolidated pair of high-profile electricity-regulation cases; Lyle Denniston has our coverage, with other coverage coming from David Savage of the Los Angeles Times and Robin Bravender of E&E; Jon Wellinghoff also discusses the case at Renewable + Law.

Coverage of and commentary on Tuesday’s oral argument in Montgomery v. Louisiana, in which the Court is considering whether its 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama applies retroactively to cases that were already final when Miller was decided, continue.  Coverage comes from NPR’s Nina Totenberg, with commentary from Leslie Shoebotham at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights. Coverage of Tuesday’s other argument, a challenge to Florida’s death penalty sentencing scheme, comes from Sam Hananel of the Associated Press (via The Gainesville Sun), with commentary from Steven Mazie for The Economist.

Briefly:

• At the Blog of Legal Times (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports on a “throwback moment” at the Court yesterday, when Catherine Robb – the granddaughter of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson – was sworn into the Supreme Court bar.
• In her column for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse discusses the prospect that the Court will take on the challenge to Texas’s new abortion laws, arguing that the “stakes couldn’t be higher, either for women who live in the growing number of states governed by anti-abortion politicians or for the court itself.”
• In the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Tony Mauro reports that an “anger-filled petition to the U.S. Supreme Court prompted five justices to recuse themselves Tuesday, raising the knotty question of what happens to a case before the high court when it lacks a quorum.”
• At the National Review, Carrie Severino summarizes the amicus briefs that have been filed in support of the non-profit groups challenging the Obama administration’s accommodation for their objection to the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate.
• At New Private Law, Greg Klass continues his analysis of DIRECTV v. Imburgia, the arbitration case in which the Court heard oral arguments last week, observing that “many of the Supreme Court’s recent arbitration cases raise the distinction between interpretation and construction.”

[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondents in DIRECTV; however, I am not affiliated with the firm.]

 

If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, or op-ed relating to the Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com.

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