Monday round-up

By Marissa Miller
on Feb 13, 2012 at 9:58 am

The weekend’s coverage of the Court continues to focus on the possible paths that Perry v. Brown, the challenge to the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage, may take to the Court, as well as speculation about what a Court decision on the issue might look like.

At this blog, Lyle Denniston provides a detailed analysis of how the case could ultimately find its way to the Court, concluding that “an appeal to the Supreme Court might not arrive in Washington until well into 2013, and might not go to a final decision by the Justices (if review is granted) until sometime in 2014.” The Associated Press (via CBS News) also has coverage. Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle suggests that, although the Court was not prepared to consider the question of same-sex marriage in 2003, when it decided Lawrence v. Texas, the Justices may now be ready to hold that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. The Huffington Post’s Mike Sacks discusses how Judge Reinhardt’s narrow ruling, “with reasoning clearly designed for a future Kennedy decision,” might backfire by relying too heavily on Romer v. Evans. [Note: The author of this post worked as a summer associate at Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, the law firm representing the defendants in the case, but she has not been involved in this aspect of the Prop. 8 litigation.]

Also in the news is the application for a stay of the Montana Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding the state’s ban on independent corporate expenditures. The measure at issue is nearly identical to the ban in federal law struck down in Citizens United v. FEC. This blog’s Lyle Denniston and JURIST’s Michael Haggerson have coverage.

Briefly:

• The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes reports that the Justices have become “fodder for late-night comedians,” an unsurprising development given that the Court “will decide a series of cases this year—including the constitutionality of the health-care overhaul—as important as any the Justices have faced in years.”
• In his column for Bloomberg News, Noah Feldman discusses recent comments by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that she would not recommend the U.S. Constitution as a guide for Egyptians drafting a new constitution. Feldman explains that the Justice “was telling the Egyptians to borrow from modern constitutions—because they spell out the answers to contemporary problems. If a constitution is fresh from the box, judges don’t have to channel historical figures.”
• As Joshua reported in Friday’s round-up, the Senate Judiciary Committee has passed on to the full chamber a bill that would allow Court proceedings to be televised. The New American’s Joe Wolverton provides additional coverage.
• In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Eric J. Segall argues that Justice Elena Kagan should offer a formal explanation for her decision not to recuse herself from the challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
• This blog’s Lyle Denniston reports that Magner v. Gallagher, scheduled for oral argument on February 29, has been dismissed by the petitioners with the consent of the respondents.  [Note:  The law firm of Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, served as counsel to the respondents in the case, but the author of this post was not involved in the case.]
• UPI’s Michael Kirkland discusses the implications of the Court’s decision in Citizens United for the 2012 election.
• David Crary of the Associated Press reports on remarks last week by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who suggested that the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade “moved too far too fast.” Justice Ginsburg argued that the Justices should have delayed hearing such cases while the state-by-state process evolved, or alternatively, should have struck down just the Texas law without declaring a right to privacy that legalized the procedure nationwide
• The ABA Journal’s Jill Schachner Chanen discusses the film The Loving Story, a documentary on the couple behind the Court’s landmark decision in Loving v. Virginia.
• At On Brief, Ryan Koopmans reports that a manager arrested after an immigration raid on a meat-processing plant has hired former Solicitor General Paul Clement to appeal his conviction and sentence to the Court.