Monday round-up

AMY HOWE JAN 4, 2016 6:25 AM

Happy 2016!  Before 2015 ended, Chief Justice John Roberts released his year-end report – in which, as Lyle Denniston reported for this blog, he urged “lawyers who practice in federal courts to take steps to help improve the efficiency, and reduce the cost, of trying cases.”  Other coverage of the Chief Justice’s annual report came from Tony Mauro for The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required) and The Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin.  Commentary comes from Patricia Moore, who at the Civil Procedure and Federal Courts Blog criticizes the Chief Justice’s characterization of the process used to amend the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as intended “to imply that the process ensures a national consensus and an impartial solution that will affect all litigants equally.”  “But,” she contends, “these suggested implications are false.”

Last week Lyle Denniston reported for this blog on the latest filings in the Origination Clause challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which is based on the argument that legislation which raises money through a tax must begin in the House of Representatives.  At the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog, Timothy Sandefur discusses the case and urges the Court to grant review.

Briefly:

• In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Linda Hirshman discusses a scenario in which the next president winds up “practically powerless when it comes to appointments” to the Supreme Court, because “the partisan divide is so deep, it may be impossible to get Supreme Court nominees confirmed.”
• At Cato at Liberty, Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber discuss the amicus brief that Cato filed in support of a petition for certiorari seeking review of a Tenth Circuit decision rejecting an objection to “an image on Oklahoma’s license plate of the Sacred Rain Arrow statue, which depicts a young Apache warrior shooting an arrow into the sky as a prayer for rain.”
• At his eponymous blog, Kenneth Jost names Justice Anthony Kennedy his “Person of the Year” for the U.S. in 2015, explaining that Kennedy “played a pivotal role in a term of memorable decisions that tilted left in part because of Kennedy’s votes in several major cases.”

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