Monday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Oct 19, 2015 at 8:48 am

There is still more coverage of and commentary on the class-action case Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez.  Writing for the ABA Journal, Debra Cassens Weiss reports that the Court’s more “liberal justices appeared to side with [the plaintiff] and conservatives against him,” while “Justice Anthony M. Kennedy appeared to be the swing vote.” At Mayer Brown’s Class Defense Blog, Archis Parasharami looks back at last week’s oral arguments and concludes that “a number of the Justices were concerned about allowing a plaintiff whose individual claims would be fully satisfied by an offer of judgment to nonetheless invoke the machinery of the federal courts.”  And at Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost observes that, although the legal issue at stake in the case “might have seemed impenetrably technical and minimally significant,” “the stakes are actually quite high.” 

Briefly:

• At Forbes, JV DeLong urges the Court to hear the case of former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell and rule in McDonnell’s favor “not because of any deserts on his part, but as a step back from the frightening system of over-criminalization combined with random and politicized enforcement that is taking over the legal system.”
• The Associated Press (via The Gainesville Sun) reports on “a new appeal filed by gun owners that challenges a Chicago suburb’s assault weapons ban,” which was relisted last week.
• At CNSNews.com, Lynn Wardle discusses a list of the Supreme Court’s worst decisions; he concludes that, although the list “betrays a very strong ideological bias,” it is also a “good reminder that the Supreme Court has stumbled from time to time and has committed some very serious blunders.”
• At Bloomberg BNA (video), Kimberly Robinson discusses “the past, present and future of capital sentencing” with law professor David Cole.

 If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, or op-ed relating to the Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com.