Tuesday round-up
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on Dec 29, 2015 at 6:53 am
In The Washington Post, Janell Ross reports on an interview with Justice Stephen Breyer, noting that the interview “did highlight a kind of sleeper issue scarcely mentioned in public since the 2016 presidential campaign began in earnest”: “Assuming that the composition of the court remains unchanged, Breyer will celebrate his 78th birthday by the time the next president takes office in January 2017. And three other justices will be older than 80.” And in The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro reports on the same interview, noting that Breyer “sidestepped questions about Donald Trump’s views on Muslims, but said he doubted anything like the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans would ever occur again.”
Briefly:
- At Hamilton and Griffin on Rights, Jeffrey Stempel looks back at Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, describing it as a case that “involves difficult areas of law putting several values in tension that has never been clearly resolved by the judicial system.”
- In the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Tony Mauro discusses new research which refutes the theory that “Justice James McReynolds, historically one of the court’s least liked members, was said to have been such a dedicated anti-Semite that he refused to sit next to Justice Louis Brandeis for a 1924 group photograph.”
- In the ABA Journal, Mark Walsh previews next month’s argument in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, in which the Justices will consider whether public employees who decline to join a union can be required to pay their “fair share” of collective bargaining costs.