Thursday round-up
on Aug 22, 2013 at 7:44 am
In her column for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse canvasses the Court’s case law to imagine how the Court might rule on the constitutionality of New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy, which a federal district judge recently struck down as violating the constitutional rights of minorities in that city. She concludes that, “[t]o the question of whether I’m glad the case will likely not find its way to the Supreme Court’s door, the answer is yes.”
In the wake of last Term’s decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, in which the Court held that an Arizona law which required proof of citizenship for would-be voters was preempted by the federal National Voter Registration Act, officials in Kansas and Arizona have filed a new lawsuit against the federal government in which they challenge the government’s authority to preclude the states from gathering information that they deem necessary to enforce voter qualifications. As Sahil Kapur reports at Talking Points Memo, this lawsuit follows a suggestion to that effect by Justice Scalia in his opinion for the Court in Inter Tribal Council.
At iSCOTUS, Allison Bernstein discusses this Term’s McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of aggregate limits on federal campaign contributions. Bernstein surveys some of the recent coverage of, and commentary on, the case – including this blog’s recent online symposium.
At the Blog of Legal Times, Tony Mauro reports that Philip Alito, the son of Justice Samuel Alito, has been hired as an associate by the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Mauro notes that when Alito starts work in the fall, he will be joining “one of the most active Supreme Court practices anywhere.”
