Wednesday round-up

By Conor McEvily
on Jul 13, 2011 at 9:53 am

As Lyle reported on Monday night (and Kiera covered in yesterday’s round-up), on Monday a gay couple who want to have both of their names listed on the birth certificate of their adopted child filed a cert. petition seeking review of a decision by the Fifth Circuit, which held that the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause applies only to state courts, such that federal courts cannot herar a civil rights claim seeking to enforce the Clause against state officials.  CNN’s Bill Mears observes that the case, Adar v. Smith (11-46), “could have broader implications in the current legal fight in state and federal courts over same-sex marriage and whether states . . . must honor legal rights that gays and lesbians enjoy in other states.”  Chris Morris at JURIST also provides coverage.

The editorial board at USA Today discusses next Term’s United States v. Jones, in which the Court will determine whether police need to obtain a warrant to put a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle; the board argues that the Court should require a warrant not only to avoid providing the government with the “unfettered right to track anyone on any pretext,” but also because the Court is still in the nascent stages of “working out how privacy law will apply to endless new ways to watch all Americans.”  USA Today also provides an opposing view, advanced by Jon Adler, here.

Finally, commentators continue to discuss Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, the violent video games case.  Writing for the American Spectator, Andrew Barr agrees with Justice Scalia that “instances of violence permeate deep into our cultural fabric,” and he suggests that laws restricting the sales of violent video games “ignore the fact that Americans have always been highly competitive and aggressive.”  But in an op-ed for the Bethlehem Patch, Tara Zrinski takes a different approach, suggesting that violent video games fall into the same category as alcohol, cigarettes, or pornography – “things a minor doesn’t have the capacity to make a decision about.”

Briefly

• Reuters (via the Los Angeles Times) reports that Justice Breyer will be officiating at the wedding of former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, which will take place this week in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
• Patrick Lee for the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog reports that Green Bag, a quarterly law review, will be issuing Justice Thomas bobblehead dolls to commemorate his twenty years on the Court.  (An annotated image of the bobblehead is available here.)
• Dan Markel at PrawfsBlawg reports on one response to a recent comment by the Chief Justice about the irrelevance of legal scholarship – this one, by an unnamed Harvard Law professor.
• In an interview on ACSblog, Allison Zieve of Public Citizen argues that recent Court decisions continue to limit the ability of individuals to seek justice in the courts.
• There will be  a webcast of the  U.C. Irvine School of Law’s Term Review, which begins today at 12:00 Pacific/3:00 Eastern, here.