Thursday Round-up
on Oct 22, 2009 at 9:50 am
Tuesday’s orders are still dominating the news and blog headlines. At USA Today, Joan Biskupic reports on the cert. grant in Kiyemba v. Obama (08-1234), noting that the case represents the first time the Obama administration will come before the Court on the issue of Guantánamo Bay detention policy and also pointing out that Kiyemba will “test the strength†of the Court’s 2008 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush. Andy Worthington at the Huffington Post also covers Kiyemba, detailing the legal background at issue in the case, and a Washington Post editorial urges the Obama administration to craft a political remedy for the Uighur detainees’ plight before the Court resolves the issue – “possibly in a manner that could reach well beyond these cases.â€
Also covering Tuesday’s orders, the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday addressed the Court’s decision to decline the cert. petition of the parents of an American teenager killed in a terror attack in Israel, who sought to recover damages from individuals and groups accused of supporting Hamas. In addition, at the Dallas Morning News, Sherry Jacobson has an article on the Court’s refusal on Monday to hear an appeal by death row inmate Kenneth Mosley, while the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette covers the decision to return the capital case of Joseph E. Corcoran to the Seventh Circuit.
With more on cert. denials, the Chicago Tribune recaps the Court’s decision, from which Chief Justice Roberts dissented, to let stand a ruling that a police officer, acting on a tip, can follow but not stop a suspected drunk driver’s car unless he witnesses suspicious activity. At Law.com, Henry Gottlieb, writing for the New Jersey Law Journal, reports that the Court on Tuesday let stand a ruling that a dating service sued for consumer fraud should pay to notify potential class-action beneficiaries. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy and Sotomayor wrote a concurrence accompanying the cert. denial, in which they pointed out that a due process question was raised by the assertion that the costs of class notification could be imposed on a defendant without consideration of the merits of the suit.
Looking back at one of last week’s arguments, L. Song Richardson, writing for ACSblog, recaps the issues at stake in Padilla v. Kentucky (08-651). Richardson posits that the tone of the argument suggests that the Court may issue a broad decision in the case, and asserts that a ruling in Padilla has the potential to “define the scope of the right to the effective assistance of counsel in the guilty plea context,†with significant implications for both citizens and non-citizens.
Covering one of the Court’s upcoming cases, John Gibeaut at the ABA Journal offers background information and a detailed summary and the issues at stake in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee (08-1065). The case is scheduled to be argued on November 4.
Washington and Lee law professor Scott E. Sundby has published a paper, entitled “Mapp v. Ohio’s Unsung Hero: Suppression Hearings as Morality Play,†addressing the recent focus on the exclusionary rule in light of recent Court opinions. Sundby posits that the Court’s recent actions suggest that it might be inclined to overrule Mapp v. Ohio, which subjects police actions implicating the Fourth Amendment to judicial scrutiny. If the case is overruled, Sundby argues, the Court must take into account the benefits of suppression hearings in analyzing the constitutionality of police actions. The paper is available on SSRN.
