Thursday round-up

A Conference is scheduled for tomorrow (you can see our list of petitions to watch at that Conference here), and oral arguments resume on Monday. In brief, here is todays  Court-related coverage:

• At the Huffington Post, John Paul Rollert discusses Justice Alitos dissent in Snyder v. Phelps. We have seen the face of empathy on the Supreme Court, Rollert suggests, and his name is Sam Alito.
• Bloombergs Greg Stohr previews Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the Courts first look in 12 years at the standards for certifying a class action. Worker advocates say a victory for Wal-Mart would crush efforts to force change at companies steeped in bias, while corporate groups say a ruling allowing the suit might unleash a wave of employment, antitrust and product-liability suits.
• At the NROs Bench Memos, Ed Whelan points out where he thinks Wednesdays New York Times editorial about the Courts recusal policy, which Adam covered in yesterdays round-up, gets some basic things wrong.
• On Friday, Justice Sotomayor accepted an award from the Philadelphia Bar Association for her accomplishments in diversifying the legal profession, Amaris Elliott-Engel of the Legal Intelligencer reports.  Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal notes that Justice Sotomayor was careful to avoid a simmering controversy over Supreme Court recusals when answering audience questions.