Wednesday Round-up

During a slow week at the Court, the amicus briefs filed Monday in the gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago continue to be the biggest news.  At Balkinization, David Gans describes the “overwhelming case” made by the Constitutional Accountability Center in its amicus brief (of which he is a co-author) for the Court to rejuvenate the Privileges or Immunities Clause; at the same time, Gans aims to quell concerns that such a move would endanger the constitutional rights of non-citizens.  Douglas Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy sifts through the briefs for arguments about criminal justice implications. And at The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr segues from originalist arguments in the briefs to a discussion of originalism and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

The Jurist notes the filing of other amicus briefs yesterday in the terrorism support case Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.

The WSJ Law Blog discusses the judicial takings theory advanced by the petitioners in Stop the Beach, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, to be argued next week.  (You can read Elisabeth Oppenheimer’s preview of the case for Scotuswiki here.)

The Constitutional Law Prof Blog follows the bill introduced by Senator Arlen Specter to undo the Court’s decision last Term in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which raised the pleading standard for plaintiffs in federal court.

Both the WSJ Law Blog and NPR have pieces comparing a recent ruling by the New York Court of Appeals on the taking of private property for the Atlantic Yards project – a private development in Brooklyn –to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Kelo v. New London. Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy offers a lengthy commentary on the case.

Also at The Volokh Conspiracy, John Elwood discusses possible reasons why the Court has yet to hand down an opinion in a case argued this Term – an unusual phenomenon.

Briefly, the Hartford Courant reports on the latest development in the Ricci v. DeStefano saga:  an order by a federal district judge requiring New Haven to promote fourteen firefighters who qualified for promotions under the 2003 exams whose results the City threw out.

Taking issue with Adam Liptak’s recent article suggesting that the views of right and left are converging closer in some areas of criminal law, Kent Scheidegger of Crime and Consequences argues that “the divide remains as strong as ever.”

Two new reviews of Joan Biskupic’s biography of Justice Scalia appeared yesterday.  Emily Bazelon at Slate uses the book as a platform to characterize Scalia as an “alienator” of other justices; in her view, the book as a whole delivers “neither a knockout punch nor a bear hug” to the Justice, while a Philadelphia Bulletin opinion piece offers a perspective on the book from a Scalia sympathizer.

David Ingram at the BLT notes that Senate candidates are still discussing the nomination of Justice Sotomayor in their campaigns.

NOTE: This is the last round-up for this week, due to the Thanksgiving holiday. In addition to weekend news, the Monday round-up will cover news that appears over the next two days.