Friday round-up

By Kiran Bhat
on Apr 8, 2011 at 9:44 am

The Court has no events scheduled for today.

Briefly:

• The editorial board of the New York Times discusses Tuesday’s order staying the execution of Texas inmate Cleve Foster.  (Lyle covered the stay, as well as the stay granted to an Arizona inmate, here.)  The board urges the Justices to “give Mr. Foster the chance to prove his innocence,” and it expresses skepticism regarding the state’s plan to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental in its lethal injection protocol.
• In the Bergen Record, law professor Penny Venetis argues that Wal-Mart v. Dukes should be allowed to proceed as a class-action lawsuit. She contends that “[i]nstead of trying to kick hard-working women out of Court, Wal-Mart should let a jury determine whether their discrimination charges are true.”
• Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal reviews this week’s dissent by Justice Kagan in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn; she suggests – quoting Andrew Cohen of the Atlantic – that Kagan could rival Justice Antonin Scalia in terms of “flair.”
• Yesterday Microsoft filed its reply brief in Microsoft v. i4i Limited Partnership, scheduled for Monday, April 18. Jay Greene of CNET News summarizes the brief and provides a preview of the case.
• Peter Lu of the Hartford Advocate discusses the Court’s decision in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T, Inc and notes that the case began as “overcharging for services at a Connecticut school system” and “turned into a U.S. Supreme Court decision redefining what it means to be a corporation.”
• Ilya Shapiro of Cato @ Liberty highlights the popularity and relative accuracy of FantasySCOTUS.net, a website dedicated to predicting the outcome of the Court’s cases.