Thursday round-up
on May 17, 2012 at 9:26 am
Coverage of Monday’s decision in Hall v. United States continued yesterday. Writing for this blog, Ronald Mann argued that the case, in which the Court held that tax liability incurred from the post-petition sale of a family farm is not dischargeable under Chapter 12 of the Bankruptcy Code, is “emblematic of the Court’s long-standing skepticism of the Bankruptcy Code as an important institution for mitigating the long-term costs of financial distress.”
Other coverage focuses on campaign finance, after Jeffrey Toobin’s recent story for the New Yorker on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. At Slate, Rick Hasen calls on Justice Souter to release the unpublished dissent he wrote before the case was held over for re-argument after his retirement in 2009. At Mother Jones, Gavin Aronsen profiles four pending campaign finance cases and assesses their prospects for rolling back Citizens United. In another story at Slate, Rick Hasen discusses one of those cases, Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission, in which a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit refused to stay a district court decision requiring tax-exempt organizations that run election-related ads to disclose their donors. Hasen explains why the Court “might well agree to stay the ruling through the November elections,” in spite of its consistent support for disclosure requirements.
Briefly:
- Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News discusses recent criticisms of Justice Scalia’s tone at oral arguments.
- Writing at PrawfsBlawg, Daniel Hemel argues that Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services, the challenge by a group of states to the Affordable Care Act, is barred by the Tax Anti-Injunction Act even if the individual mandate provisions do not count as a tax.
- At the Opinionator blog of the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse urges the Court to grant certiorari on one of the pending Guantanamo detainee cases.
- The New York Daily News reports on Justice Sotomayor’s commencement address at NYU yesterday.
- Over at NPR‘s Deceptive Cadence music blog, Anastasia Tsioulcas discusses Justice Ginsburg’s love of classical music and her invitation to pianist Leon Fleisher to play at the Court yesterday.
