Thursday round-up
on Sep 27, 2012 at 10:43 am
Yesterday the Court released the hearing list for the October sitting, which begins on Monday. Lyle Denniston covered the release for this blog.
The Term’s first oral argument will be the reargument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. Lyle Denniston previewed the case for this blog, while Faiza Patel and Amos Toh of the Brennan Center for Justice and Lawrence Hurley of California Lawyer also have previews.
Other coverage focuses on the same-sex marriage cases; the Court has before it several petitions seeking review of the challenges to California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Terry Baynes of Reuters reports that the Second Circuit will hear arguments today in Windsor v. United States, in which the Southern District of New York struck down Section 3 of DOMA on the ground that it discriminated against married same-sex couples. The plaintiffs and the Solicitor General have petitioned for cert. before judgment in the case, but the Court did not act on those petitions after the Long Conference on Monday. Carolyn Lochhead and Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as Brian Moulton of the Human Rights Campaign Blog and Lisa Keen of PrideSource, also have coverage of the background and procedural postures of the same-sex marriage cases.
Media Matters has released a report showing that “[p]rimetime news has largely overlooked the future ideological direction of the U.S. Supreme Court as a key election issue”; Jeremy Leaming has commentary at ACSblog . Meanwhile, the Associated Press (via The Washington Post) reports on the likely impact of new appointees to the Court on gun laws.
Briefly:
- IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law announced that on October 3 Justice Stevens will speak on the Court’s 2010 decision in Stop The Beach Renourishment Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The lecture will be posted on the school’s YouTube channel.
- The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange has issued a report on the effects of the Court’s decisions in Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama, in which the Court prohibited mandatory sentences of life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Douglas A. Berman of the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog has further details.
- Stephen Wermiel has a new post in this blog’s “SCOTUS for law students” series, sponsored by Bloomberg Law, discussing the Court’s shrinking docket.
- Mary Orndorff Troyan of The Birmingham News reports on the Justice Department’s brief opposing cert. in Shelby County v. Holder, a challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
- David Royse of The News Service of Florida (via Naples Daily News) previews Florida v. Harris and Florida v. Jardines, two cases involving the use of drug-sniffing dogs that are scheduled for oral argument in late October.
- Lawrence Hurley of E&E Publishing previews Arkansas Game and Fish Commission v. United States, in which the Court will consider whether government actions that impose recurring floods on private property constitute a taking.
- Michael Doyle of McClatchy Newspapers (via The State) previews Delia v. E.M.A., in which the Court will consider whether Medicaid’s anti-lien provision preempts a North Carolina law allowing the state to reclaim one-third of a medical malpractice settlement when the treatment was funded by the state’s Medicaid program.
- Sam Favate of the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog reports on the ACLU’s petition for cert. in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, in which it asks the Court to determine whether human genes can be patented.
- At the ACLU’s Blog of Rights, Sameera Rahman reports on the amicus briefs filed in support of the respondents in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, a challenge to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act of 2008.
