Friday round-up
Yesterday the Court issued three decisions in argued cases. Andrew Hamm rounded up early coverage and commentary for this blog. Other coverage of the Court’s decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, in which the Court weighed in on the standard for fee-shifting under the Copyright Act, comes from Ronald Mann for this blog. Coverage of the Court’s decision in Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar, in which the Court ruled on the circumstances in which the implied false certification theory can be a basis for liability under the False Claims Act, comes from Ronald Mann for this blog and David Savage of Los Angeles Times, while at Crime and Consequences Kent Scheidegger looks at the “interesting and potentially relevant aspects” of yesterday’s cases.
Coverage and commentary relating to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland to succeed him comes from Thomas Burr of The Salt Lake Tribune, who reports that a “clear majority of Utah voters wants the Senate to hold hearings on President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court in contrast with the state’s two senators”; from Greg Stohr of Bloomberg Politics, who reports that the “top lawyers at 44 U.S. companies, including Nike Inc. and Viacom Inc., are calling on the U.S. Senate to take up the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland”; and from law school dean and former Garland clerk Eric Berger, who in comments to RadioIowa criticizes Senate Republicans for not holding a hearing for Garland.
Briefly:
- At the Sixth Amendment Center, David Carroll discusses Monday’s decision in United States v. Bryant, in which the Court ruled that tribal-court convictions can be used as the predicate offenses for a habitual-offender statute, even if the defendant did not have an attorney in the tribal-court proceedings.
- At Hosts of Error, Will Rosenzweig looks back at the Court’s recent opinion in Foster v. Chatman, describing it as “unremarkable in its obviousness.”
- At Cato at Liberty, Ilya Shapiro and Jayme Weber urge the court to grant review in a case in which lower courts “upheld a settlement certification without opt-out in a case that originally made claims only for monetary relief”; they argue that, if the decision below is “allowed to stand, this precedent will be a wink and a nod to class counsel and defendants everywhere that, if sufficient care is taken in crafting a settlement, they need not worry about the rights and interests of those pesky class members.”
- At the Appellate Practice Blog, Lisa Soronen looks ahead to next Term’s Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley; she observes that there are “two ways of looking at this case, both of which are hard to argue with: state aid to religious organizations means less money for secular causes, and all preschool students should have access to safe playgrounds no matter where they go to school.”
- At the “Room for Debate” feature of The New York Times, Eric Ruben and Josh Blackman discuss gun control and the Court.
- A symposium at The Case Western Reserve Law Review looks back at the twentieth anniversary of the Court’s ruling in Whren v. United States.
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