Monday round-up

This morning the Supreme Court will kick off its November argument session with two arbitration cases. In Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., the justices will consider whether a judge or an arbitrator should decide if a particular dispute should be resolved in arbitration rather than in court. Ronald Mann previewed the case for this blog. Clotilde Le Roy and Grace Brosofsky have a preview at Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. The second case of the morning is Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela, which asks whether the Federal Arbitration Act precludes state-law interpretations of arbitration contracts that would allow class-wide arbitration. Charlotte Garden had this blog’s preview, and Lauren Kloss and Nayanthika Ramakrishnan preview the case for Cornell. For CNBC, Tucker Higgins reports that the Supreme Court’s arbitration cases this term may make it “harder for American workers to bring lawsuits against their employers.”

On Friday the court added three cases to its merits docket. Amy Howe covers the order list for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. At Law360 (subscription required), Bill Donahue reports that in Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology LLC, the justices will consider “what happens to a trademark license when the brand owner goes bankrupt, a question that has quietly led to a deep circuit split.” Also at Law360, Ryan Davis reports that another of the newly granted cases, Return Mail Inc. v. United States Postal Service, “will determine whether the federal government can challenge patents under the America Invents Act.”

Briefly:

• A Daily Journal podcast featuring law professor Michael Allan Wolf and Philip Gregory, co-counsel in Juliana v. United States, the climate-change lawsuit brought on behalf of teenagers that the Supreme Court has put on a temporary hold, explores the prospects for environmental litigation before a “firmly conservative, pro-business Supreme Court.”
• At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost explains why “the smorgasbord of ideas discussed at a program sponsored by the liberal American Constitution Society (ACS) last week seem unlikely to be adopted or, even if adopted, to reduce the level of political conflict currently surrounding the Court.”
• In a podcast at Howe on the Court, Amy Howe covers last week’s Supreme Court news, including retired justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s announcement that “she has been diagnosed with dementia and will no longer participate in public life.”

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