Monday round-up

The second week of the Supreme Court’s December session begins with two oral arguments. First up is Dawson v. Steager, which asks whether federal law or the doctrine of intergovernmental tax immunity prevents West Virginia from differential taxation of retirement benefits of certain former state and federal employees. Daniel Hemel had this blog’s preview. Lauren Devendorf and Luis Lozada preview the case for Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. Subscript Law has a graphic explainer. Today’s second argument is in Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission, a securities-fraud case in which the justices will consider whether someone who distributed false statements drafted by someone else can be held liable for participating in a fraudulent scheme. Ronald Mann previewed the case for this blog; Isaac Syed and Yuexin Angela Zhu have Cornell’s preview.

In a podcast at Bloomberg Law, Kimberly Robinson and Jordan Rubin offer a sneak peek at all the cases on this week’s argument docket. In a podcast at Howe on the Court, Amy Howe has a rundown of last week’s Supreme Court news, “including the oral arguments in a dispute over Apple’s sale of apps to iPhone users and the second opinion of the term.” At First Mondays (podcast), Dan Epps and Leah Litman recap some of last week’s arguments and look ahead to Thursday’s argument in Gamble v. United States, which asks whether the Supreme Court should overrule an exception to the double jeopardy clause that allows a defendant to be prosecuted for the same crime in both federal and state court.

At Bloomberg Law, Kimberly Robinson takes a look at the potential impact on state courts if the Supreme Court applied the Bill of Rights to the states as completely as some justices discussed during the oral argument last week in Timbs v. Indiana, in which the court considered whether the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines applies to the states. At The Daily Signal, Jason Snead and Elizabeth Slattery discuss the oral argument in Timbs, noting that, “while there seemed to be broad support for incorporating the Excessive Fines Clause, and possibly for holding that the clause does indeed apply to civil forfeitures that are punitive in nature, there was no clear agreement about how to define an ‘excessive’ civil forfeiture.” A podcast at the Daily Journal offers competing views on the issues in Timbs. Another look at the case comes from Kenneth Jost at Jost on Justice.

Briefly:

• At The National Law Journal, Tony Mauro reports that a “coalition of 18 law firms that specialize in Supreme Court advocacy told the court Friday that proposed rules aimed at trimming the length of briefs ‘would be harmful’ to lawyers’ ability to ‘thoroughly and thoughtfully brief issues that are critical to the court’s resolution of the cases before it.’”
• At Florida Court Review, John Cavaliere writes that when the Supreme Court rules on the cert petition filed by Florida death-row inmate Jose Antonio Jimenez, “[w]e’ll find out whether any of the justices think the Florida Supreme Court should’ve specifically ruled on Jimenez’s Due Process argument or if they will continue their streak of denying relief without comment in Florida death warrant cases.”
• At ACS Blog, Justin Pidot looks at Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion for a unanimous court last week in Weyerhaeuser Company v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, suggesting that “[t]he result may telegraph more about the Chief Justice’s concern with the institution of the Supreme Court than about his views about the case itself.”

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