Tuesday round-up

AMY HOWE JUN 7, 2016 9:58 AM

Yesterday the Court issued orders from last Thursday’s conference.  It added three cases to its merits docket for next Term and called for the views of the Solicitor General in a fourth case. Lyle Denniston covered the three new merits cases for this blog, as well as the invitation in a second post.

Coverage of yesterday’s grant in Moore v. Texas, in which the Court will consider whether the state used the correct standard to determine whether death-row inmate Bobby James Moore is too intellectually disabled to be executed, as well as the grant in Buck v. Stephens, a death penalty case that has its roots in testimony – offered by the defendant’s own expert – that the defendant was likely to be dangerous in the future because of his race, comes from Tony Mauro for Law.com (subscription or registration may be required), Richard Wolf of USA Today, Adam Liptak of The New York Times, Robert Barnes of The Washington Post, Jaclyn Belczyk of JURIST, Lydia Wheeler of The Hill, Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed,  And at Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer focuses on Moore’s challenge to the length of his confinement – which the Court originally (but erroneously) appeared to be ready to review.  Commentary on yesterday’s grants comes from Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences.  Coverage of the grant in Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections comes from Travis Fain for Daily Press.

Coverage of yesterday’s decision in Simmons v. Himmelreich comes from Steven Schwinn for this blog and Jaclyn Belczyk of JURIST, while coverage of the decision in Ross v. Blake comes from Barbara Leonard of Courthouse News Service.

Commentary related to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland to succeed him, and Supreme Court nominations generally comes from David Fontana at PrawfsBlawg, Geoffrey Stone and Todd Henderson of the University of Chicago Law School at a panel (video) moderated by journalist Lynn Sweet, and the editorial board of The Washington Post.

Briefly:

• Pete Williams of NBC News looks ahead at some of the major cases that have not yet been decided.
• In Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Tony Mauro reports on remarks by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was “wistful about the days earlier in his career when lawyers who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and law clerks who worked for the justices were less polished than they are now.”
• At Cato at Liberty, Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer urge the Court to grant review in a case brought by a California builder’s association, which “is now asking the Court to establish that judicial review is available for individuals and businesses affected by these agency actions that purport to enforce the Endangered Species Act.”

• At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern urges the Court to grant review in a case brought by American Samoans, who do not receive U.S. citizenship at birth, and grant them “the citizenship rights guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution. Anything less would be a betrayal of the American constitutional project.”
• Also in Slate, Hampton Dellinger looks at the legal battles of the late Muhammad Ali and concludes that “Ali’s 1971 vindication in the Supreme Court was, at most, an exceedingly narrow victor Before Ali won in court, he lost a vast amount of a commodity whose value cannot be measured.”
• Commentary on the Court’s decision in Foster v. Chatman comes from Margaret Drew, who at the Human Rights at Home Blog suggests that the “case is unlikely to influence future discrimination cases except in one regard:  it is possible that some judges will scrutinize more closely the Batson claims of prosecutors that there were ‘legitimate reasons’ for eliminating black jurors.”
• In an op-ed for The New York Times, Osagie Obasogie observes that, forty years ago today, “the Supreme Court decided a pivotal case on race and equality whose legacy has profoundly shaped American race relations. And most people have never heard of it.”
• The editorial board of The New York Times urges the Court to grant review in the case of Louisiana death-row inmate David Brown and argues that the case is “a good example of how every part of the justice system bears some responsibility for not fighting prosecutorial misconduct.”

Remember, we rely exclusively on our readers to send us links for our round-up.  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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