Monday round-up

By James Bickford
on Jan 31, 2011 at 9:17 am

In a quiet time at the Supreme Court, Robert Barnes of the Washington Post examines the Court’s recent opinions reversing decisions of the Ninth Circuit.  Barnes describes the Court as having “been in scold mode,” “reject[ing] the work of the San Francisco-based court without a single affirmative vote from a justice” in five consecutive cases.  In her column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Debra Saunders argues that the unanimity of these decisions “means that there’s no left-right political divide in the Big Bench’s findings – just right on the law and wrong on the law.”

Anderson, South Carolina’s Independent Mail looks ahead to the oral argument in Turner v. Rogers – a case involving civil contempt and the right to counsel – while ACSblog looks back a year after the Court’s decision in Citizens United.

The editorial board of the Miami Herald applauds last week’s decision in Thompson v. North American Stainless, in which a unanimous Court ruled that Title VII prohibits an employer from firing an employee in retaliation for the filing of a gender discrimination claim by the employee’s fiancée.  Meanwhile, the editorial board of the Trenton Times expresses regret that the full Court did not attend last week’s State of the Union address.