Friday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Apr 10, 2015 at 9:45 am

The upcoming oral arguments in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage continue to dominate Court-related coverage and commentary.  In his column for Big Think, Steven Mazie summarizes what he characterizes as the “loopiest, craziest, pull-out-all-the-stops worst argument for insisting that marriage remain a heterosexuals-only club.”  Judith Schaeffer continues the Constitutional Accountability Center’s analysis of the Roberts Court in its tenth Term with a look at LGBT rights and same-sex marriage, while in an op-ed for The Courier-Journal she commemorates the forty-eighth anniversary of the oral arguments in Loving v. Virginia, “a case that produced the court’s most important ruling to date vindicating the fundamental right to marry.”

Briefly:

• The Daily Mail (in what may be its first appearance in our round-up) reports on a petition that asks Ben & Jerry’s to name an ice cream flavor “Ruth Bader Ginger” after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
• In an op-ed for The Legal Intelligencer (subscription or registration required), Charles Kelbley looks back at the recent oral argument in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission and argues that, in light of the Court’s failure to provide standards for gerrymandering, “perhaps it should consider the thinking underlying the use of independent commissions. By recognizing non-partisan commissions, the problem of gerrymandering may finally reach an acceptable resolution that is free of partisan politics.”
• At Patently O, Shubha Ghosh discusses the recent oral arguments in the patent case Kimble v. Marvel Enterprises and concludes that the Court “is grappling with two issues. The first is that of stare decisis. The second is what standard should replace the per se rule articulated in Brulotte  if it is overruled.”

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