Thursday round-up
on Jan 31, 2019 at 10:45 am
Briefly:
- At Verdict, Sherry Colb discusses Mitchell v. Wisconsin, in which the court will decide whether a statute authorizing a blood draw from an unconscious motorist provides an exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement; she questions the utility of the “implied consent” concept, arguing that the Fourth Amendment analysis would be cleaner without it.
- In the New York Law Journal (registration required), Jason Grant reports that the Supreme Court has ordered New York to respond to a petition for certiorari filed by a lawyer who uses a wheelchair and is seeking to have the Kings County Supreme Court civil courthouse made accessible.
- In an op-ed at The Daily Signal, Michael Berry writes that — even though the Supreme Court declined to hear the case of his client, Joseph Kennedy, a football coach fired after praying with his players – he is “confident Kennedy will be able to return to the field, and that the First Amendment rights of coaches and teachers will be restored,” based on Justice Samuel Alito’s statement (joined by three other justices) regarding denial of review.
- In The National Law Review, Jeanne Amy looks at the court’s decision to review whether punitive damages are recoverable in general maritime-law claims for unseaworthiness, in The Dutra Group v. Batterton, which, she writes, “brings the issue into focus for the high court because it is directly at odds with a 2014 US Fifth Circuit decision that held that punitive damages are nonpecuniary and therefore not recoverable in unseaworthiness actions.”
- In an op-ed for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse writes that although her “feminist sensibilities make [her] wary of suggesting that Ginni Thomas should not be completely free to embrace her causes,” Greenhouse questions whether “there’s something troublesome about the unbounded nature of her public advocacy” as the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.
- In an op-ed for The Hill, Lawrence Friedman looks at New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, a challenge to the constitutionality of the city’s handgun restrictions; he concludes that “we should not be too surprised if [Chief Justice John Roberts] is able to cobble together a majority willing to resolve the dispute over New York City ordinance with a decision that is neither deep nor wide, but that incrementally advances [the] Second Amendment.”
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!
