Friday round-up
on Oct 1, 2010 at 12:23 pm
With the Court’s new Term scheduled to start next week, John Elwood at The Volokh Conspiracy provides a highly entertaining and detailed look at last Term, explaining that “[a]s a matter of principle, I feel like we can’t start the new Term until we have wrung whatever comedic value we can from the old.â€Â In his seventeen-page “Revue,†Elwood covers everything from the Citizens United rehearing to the Planet of the Apes, ultimately concluding that “life imitates Rod Serling-scripted art, sort of.â€
Other coverage also focuses on the upcoming Term. In USA Today, Joan Biskupic takes a look at the Roberts Court and concludes that it “has pushed the law to the right and is likely to break ground again this term.† The Court’s ultimate direction, Biskupic predicts, will depend on Justice Anthony Kennedy. Writing at the The CQ Researcher Blog, Kenneth Jost provides a brief preview of the Term ahead.
Next week’s arguments in Snyder v. Phelps, the funeral protest case, have drawn several articles and blog posts. In The Washington Post, Robert Barnes discusses the case in detail, concluding that it “creates an only-in-America quandary: whether the freedom of speech is so powerfully woven in the nation’s fabric that it protects one family’s right to vile and hurtful protest at the very moment of another family’s most profound grief.†PrawfsBlawg writer Howard Wasserman also has a posting on ideology and free speech at the Court.
With approximately forty percent of the Court’s docket so far made up of business-related cases, Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal Law Blog offers“Your Early Guide to the Big Business Cases of the High Court Term.â€
Briefly:
Wired’s Threat Level Blog has a new post by David Kravets that discusses technology and civil rights issues at the Court this Term.
ACSblog has more coverage of Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion, which will be published this week.
At the Des Moines Register, Jason Pulliman covers a recent lecture by Justice Alito at Drake University, giving particular attention to the Justice’s views on the potentially negative effect that cameras in the courtroom would have on oral arguments.
