Friday round-up
on Mar 9, 2012 at 9:04 am
The Affordable Care Act challenges continue to attract commentary. In the Los Angeles Times, David G. Savage reports that one of the lead private plaintiffs “went bankrupt – with unpaid medical bills” last fall – a development that “could change [her] from a symbol of proud independence into an example of exactly the problem the healthcare law was intended to address.” And in the New York Times, Robert Pear describes how “the White House has begun an aggressive campaign to use approaching Supreme Court arguments on the new health care law as a moment to build support for the measure seen as President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.”
Briefly:
- At Just Enrichment, Adam Chandler discusses procedural issues in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the challenge to the university’s use of affirmative action in its undergraduate admissions policies, and argues that this Term’s decision in Knox v. SEIU “could spell Fisher’s fate.”
- Kent Scheidegger of Crime and Consequences argues that the Court’s denial of a stay of execution to Texas murderer Keith Thurmond bodes well for Arizona’s position in Martinez v. Ryan, a pending case on ineffective assistance of counsel on state collateral review.
- Rick Hasen of the Election Law Blog reports that the Republican National Committee has lost an appeal seeking to modify or dissolve a 1982 consent decree barring the use of “ballot security” measures; he suggests that a motion for an injunction pending appeal to Justice Alito, the Circuit Justice for the Third Circuit, does not seem “far-fetched.”
- At CATO@Liberty, Carl DeNigris and Ilya Shapiro discuss CATO’s amicus brief and a pending cert. petition in King v. United States, arguing that the Ninth Circuit’s “unbounded interpretation risks greater over criminalization and further misuse of the federal criminal code.”
- As Nabiha noted in yesterday’s round-up, Justice Scalia spoke at Wesleyan about constitutional interpretation. Susan Campbell of the Hartford Courant (via the Bellingham Herald) and Stephen Singer of the Associated Press (via the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune) provide coverage.
- The editorial board of the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle urges the Court to adopt a formal code of conduct.
- Jake Highton of the Reno News & Review proposes a list of the ten worst Supreme Court opinions.
