Wednesday round-up
on Jan 15, 2014 at 7:46 am
Today the Court will hear oral argument in McCullen v. Coakley, the challenge to a Massachusetts law that creates a “buffer zone” around abortion clinics in that state. Lyle Denniston previewed the case for this blog, and I did the same in Plain English. Coverage also comes from Nina Totenberg of NPR.
Other coverage of the Court focuses on Monday’s argument in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the challenge to the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the board. Jess Bravin and Melanie Trottman reported on the proceedings at the Court for The Wall Street Journal, as did Steven Mazie for The Economist. In analysis for The Daily Beast, Andrew Cohen argues that “does not represent a constitutional crisis. It represents instead a sorry reflection of the pettiness of current political debate in Washington.” At In These Times, Moshe Marvit contends that “one can find in the arguments a sense of what the justices deem important. In Noel Canning, it is not the NLRB’s critical role in enforcing labor law, nor the likely political upheaval that would result from retiring the recess appointment power.”
Yesterday the Court issued decisions in two argued cases: Daimler AG v. Bauman and Mississippi v. AU Optronics. Bradley McAllister covered the decision in Bauman for JURIST, while JURIST’s Stephen Adelgren covered AU Optronics. At Cato at Liberty, Walter Olson looks at both of the decisions, asserting that “[n]either result is even remotely surprising.” And at Mayer Brown’s Class Defense blog, Archis A. Parasharami and Christopher Comstock discuss the impact of the decision in AU Optronics, predicting that “businesses will face more class-action-style cases in state-court forums.”
Briefly:
- Jeremy P. Jacobs of Greenwire covers yesterday’s oral argument in the property rights case Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, on which Lyle Denniston reported for this blog.
- In The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports on a recent ruling by a federal judge that returned federal oversight to voting in an Alabama city, in “what election law specialists said was the first such move since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in June.”
[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondents in Bauman, but the author of this post is not affiliated with the firm.]
